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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27062875">Escape from L.A.</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/SoloMoon/pseuds/SoloMoon'>SoloMoon</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Eleutherophobia [14]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Animorphs - Katherine A. Applegate</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Aftermath of yeerk infestation, Canon-Typical Violence and Gore, Gen, Sario Rips, Teenage-boy-typical levels of profanity, Tom Berenson POV, identity hijinks</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 21:34:47</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>31,647</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27062875</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/SoloMoon/pseuds/SoloMoon</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Tom was expecting to come home from the massive ex-host demonstration in Washington and relax.  He wasn't expecting a disgruntled extremist to mail a bomb to Matter Over Mind, leaving him and Eva to deal with the fallout of the explosion.  Too bad the fallout proves to be stranger than either of them could have ever expected.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Eleutherophobia [14]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/151619</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>413</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>379</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. One of Those</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Written to the sounds of<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWl7RRuVy0s"> "Enter" by Within Temptation.</a></p><p>Set about a month after "Slaughterhouse-Five" (about sixteen months since the end of the war), but these stories can be read in any order or alone.  All you need to know from earlier works is that Tom survived the final battle, and currently has a job working as Eva's administrative assistant.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"Did we go forward or back? Are we in the past or the future?"</p><p>&lt;Yes,&gt; Ax said. &lt;It's definitely one of those two choices.&gt;</p><p>— <em>The Forgotten</em> p. 62</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>To my surprise, I woke up.</p><p>Which presumably meant I’d survived the explosion that’d ripped through the Matter Over Mind office.</p><p>Huh.  Go, me.</p><p>Groaning low, I rolled over onto my back.  I didn't feel like I'd just been ripped apart in a blast, but my whole body was stiff.  What the hell.</p><p>Yep.  I was still where I’d been before the package had exploded.  Good old ceiling.  Good old window.  Good old Matter Over Mind office.</p><p>Good old billboards.  Good old moon.</p><p>Wait, what?</p><p>I sat up all the way, and then hauled myself to my feet to press my face against the window.  Yep, that was the moon.  It was rising — setting?  It was a few inches above the horizon, anyway.  Round and full and a <em> really fucking bad sign</em>, all things considered.</p><p>“Fuck,” I whispered, breath fogging the glass.  “How long was I out?”</p><p>It’d been early afternoon when I’d opened the damn package that I was now beginning to suspect <em> might </em>have been a letter bomb.  So… if it was now late evening at the earliest and the next fucking day at the latest…</p><p>I pressed my forehead harder against the cool glass, trying to clear my mind.  There was something I was forgetting, something important.  Maybe I didn’t feel concussed — definitely not concussed enough to have been out for several hours, anyway — but I was still fuzzy-headed, as if waking up from a deep sleep.</p><p>And that moon.  It was unsettling, for some reason I couldn’t put my finger on.</p><p>“Maybe people really do go crazy on the full moon,” I muttered.</p><p>And then it hit me, so hard I actually banged my head against the glass.  Full.  The moon was full.</p><p>We’d taken a red-eye flight last night to get back from D.C., Eva and I.  And together we’d peered through the clouds to where we could just make out the tiniest sliver of crescent moon.</p><p>Crescent.  It’d definitely been crescent.  No more than a fingernail.</p><p>My skin felt cold all over.  My mind groped for explanations, found none.</p><p>I was misremembering.  Maybe Eva and I hadn’t seen the moon at all, maybe it was just—</p><p>“Eva!”</p><p>I spun away from the glass.  Eva!  She’d been standing right next to me when the explosion had happened.  She was—</p><p>There.</p><p>She lay facedown on the floor, hair over her face.  I dived down next to her, flattening my cheek on the floor to try and get a better look.  If she was conscious, the last thing I wanted to do was move her.</p><p>“Eva,” I said, “Eva, Eva, hey, <em> Eva— </em>”</p><p>Her hair fluttered slightly with her breath.  I sucked in a sharp breath of my own with relief.</p><p>“Eva?”</p><p>She pulled in a deeper breath.  “Give,” she said, very carefully, “me… a damn… second.”</p><p>Oh.  In other words, she was conscious.  Lucid.  Maybe had been this whole time.  She was just not firing on all cylinders at the moment.  And after the shock we’d had, it was going to take her several more seconds to remember how to work her own body.</p><p>“Sorry,” I whispered, and sat back up to give her space.</p><p>While she wiggled her fingers and gradually got herself moving again, I took a look around.</p><p>Turns out I’d been wrong to assume we were still in the Matter Over Mind office.  Although the layout was similar, the carpet in here was steel-wool grey and the furniture was completely different.  Rather than the comfy desks and chairs and phones Eva and I had in our place, this one was full of scavenged yeerk tech.  There was some kind of big surveillance console in the middle of the room, lines of Galard text scrolling across its screen, and there was even a hookup for a short-term kandrona generator in the corner.</p><p>“So…” I rubbed the back of my neck.  “I’m guessing that it only <em> felt </em>like an explosion, but we actually got hit with a gas or a nerve agent or something?  And then someone dragged us in here to get us out of the, uh, toxic cloud or whatever.  And then left us here… because they’re dealing with the fallout in the rest of the building?”</p><p>Eva made a sound like <em> mmph</em>.  She scooted herself over to slide up the wall and into a sitting position.</p><p>“Not sure whose office this is, but I’m guessing it’s someone rolling in dough who also, let’s face it, has a weird yeerk fetish.”  I sat back next to Eva so that she could steady herself on my shoulder.  “Not a great look, but we’re not dead and I’m only hallucinating a tiny bit, so… yay?”</p><p>I glanced over at Eva.  She was staring at the console, frozen in place.  No way to tell if it was <em> dizzy but recovering </em> frozen or <em> terrified </em>frozen.</p><p>“Um.”  I kept rambling.  “Anyway, what do you think are the odds this has something to do with the Zombie Apocalypse?”</p><p>Still no response.</p><p>“I know, <em> I know</em>, don’t call it that.”  If I nervous-babbled any harder, pretty soon I’d be having an entire conversation with myself.  “But I’m just saying, we come back from a giant-ass protest in D.C. that stirred up, like, <em> all </em> the feathers, and then our mail explodes.  Bet we pissed someone off.”  I snapped my fingers.  “<em>Or </em> someone sent us a perfectly nice… uh, gas grill?  Or something like that.  And it was only that the mail sat there for a week unopened because I totally fucking forgot to check it or stop it before we went, and the gas built up and then…”</p><p>“When are we?” Eva said.</p><p>“Same building, judging by the floor plan and the view out the window,” I said.  “Different story, maybe.”</p><p>She shook her head, hair rustling against the wallpaper.  “<em>When </em> are we?”</p><p>“Oh, uh.”  I looked toward the window again.  The moon was definitely setting, which wasn’t comforting at all.  “Seems like it’s been a few hours, maybe.  Like, <em> it’s now early morning </em> couple of hours.  Kind of thing.”</p><p>“Early morning,” Eva muttered.  “Which morning?”</p><p>“Eva?”</p><p>She didn’t clarify.</p><p>I took a breath, trying to figure out a socially acceptable way to phrase <em> Why are you acting so fucking weird? </em> Or <em> Can you please not freak me out even more right now? </em></p><p>Bracing one hand against the wall for support, Eva pushed to her feet.  A little unsteady still, she shuffled over to the console in the middle of the room.</p><p>“We’re still in the same office,” she said flatly, staring down at it.</p><p>“Well in that case, someone did a lot of rearranging while we were both out, because…”</p><p>“Tom.  I know this.”  She flattened a hand against the console.  “It was purchased by Visser One in February of 1997.  I had it carted out of the building and melted down for scrap in May of 2000.”</p><p>“Um.”  I swallowed.  “Are you sure it’s the same one?”</p><p>She turned around to look at me.</p><p>I shrank a little.  Her meaning was pretty obvious: the console wasn’t exactly a mass-produced kind of thing.  And the data onscreen had to have dozens of unique codes built in, codes that only Visser One — or her host — would know.</p><p>Fine, then.  I went to the front door of the office.</p><p>Eva drew in a breath.  “Wait—”</p><p>I’d already pulled it open.</p><p>2203, said the number on the plaque above the frame.</p><p><em> Our </em> office was 2203.</p><p>Slowly I turned to look at the rest of the floor.</p><p>It was Sutherland Tower, right where we’d been ten minutes ago when the bomb had gone off.  It was the twenty-second floor, because all the office doors and the elevator were all helpfully numbered.  The Matter Over Mind office was at 2203 Sutherland Tower…</p><p>Only our sign was gone from the door.  And so were the long conference tables meant to go across the middle of the room.</p><p>Instead, the sign on the wall said Buyers’ Research Institute.  And the window in our door was obscured by a privacy hologram, projecting an innocuous-looking empty office.</p><p>The window hologram, like the console in our office, like the privacy dividers all around me, were yeerk tech.  All of it.  Yeerk tech, from the height of the war.</p><p>None of which had been there ten minutes ago.</p><p>I dove back inside and yanked the door shut.  Only pausing that last inch to avoid making a noise.</p><p><em> Ten minutes ago</em>.  Yeah, right.  It was time to stop denying the obvious.</p><p><em> When are we, </em>Eva had said.  She always had been smarter than I was.</p><p>“Sario rip,” I said.  “That’s actually thing?”</p><p>Eva looked up.  She was still leaning heavily on Visser One’s security console.  “The evidence certainly seems to be pointing toward that conclusion,” she drawled.</p><p>“Sario rip,” I repeated.  “Like, as in, that thing that allegedly happens when two large enough dracon beams….”  I pointed both my index fingers at each other, and then brought my fingertips together with a <em> bzzzt </em> sound.</p><p>“Presumably there was a little more than just C-4 in that package,” Eva said.  “Unlikely that this was the attacker’s intent, though.”</p><p>“Am I the only one who thought time travel was all a load of sci-fi crap?”</p><p>Eva barked a laugh.  “Sort of like aliens, you mean?”</p><p>“Shit, you’re right, from now on I’m believing in… all the things.  The FBI shot Kennedy, communists put fluoride in the water, leprechauns, unicorns, ghosts…”  I blew out a long breath.  “Fuck.”</p><p>“Still no deities, I notice,” Eva murmured.</p><p>“Eva, if you tell me to say my prayers and kiss my ass goodbye, then I swear to fuck—”</p><p>“But not to God?”</p><p>“Is now the time for this?”</p><p>“There’s a hologram on the window, isn’t there,” Eva said, focusing back on the present.  Or the past.  Or whenever it was we were.</p><p>I blinked.  “Uh, yeah.”</p><p>“And those…”  She tilted her head at the briefcases in the corner.  “Are single-cycle kandrona generators.  Anyone short of a single-digit visser wouldn’t have had access to that technology.  So it’s definitely Edriss’s office.  And that means the floor outside is…”</p><p>“Lousy with controllers?” I said.  “Judging by the Buyers’ Research Institute décor out there, yep.”</p><p>“We should go now.”  Eva ducked under the console.  She came out with a handheld dracon beam, tucking it into her pocket.  “Before the workday starts.”</p><p>“Eva.”  I stopped her before she could grab the knob.</p><p>“Tom?”  She raised her eyebrows.</p><p>“If anything happens…”</p><p>She gave me a long, steady look.  One that said that we could have this conversation after we’d already tried everything we could to get out of this situation.</p><p>“I am <em> so </em>sorry for forgetting to stop our mail while we were gone,” I said.</p><p>She chuckled.  “I’ll take it out of your next paycheck.”</p><p>“I’ll be getting a paycheck, then?”</p><p>“Not if you continue to engage in such reckless acts as <em> opening mail</em>.”</p><p>“Yeah, cool.”</p><p>“We’re going to walk quickly and quietly and act like we belong.”  She reached up to rub a hand over my upper arm, as physically affectionate as Eva ever got.  “Odds are, right now either Visser One or Visser Seventeen is someone important enough that no one will dare question us.”</p><p>“Sario rips collapse eventually, right?” I asked.  “They don’t sustain.”</p><p>Eva got what I was suggesting, of course.  “And if we do hide in here and someone finds us?” she asked.</p><p>Then they’d infest us instantly.</p><p>“Sometimes these things last hours, and sometimes weeks.”  She looked me over.  “If we’re over two years in the past, then there’s a distinct possibility that the loop won’t close until over two years have gone by.”</p><p>That was a sobering thought.</p><p>“Fuck,” I whispered.  “<em>Fuck</em>.”  In short, we weren’t safe here no matter what we did.</p><p>She gave me a faint smile.  “How do you feel about stealing a pair of Bug fighters and trying to send ourselves back to the future the fast way?”</p><p>I nodded.</p><p>She patted me on the arm again.  “Good.  Something to look forward to.  For now…”</p><p>I nodded again.</p><p>Eva went first.</p><p>We were rolling the dice on that one.  Edriss 562 had been Visser One for a hell of a lot longer than Essa 412 had been Visser Seventeen.  And we had to pick one pretense or the other.</p><p>So Eva strode out into the hallway with her chin lifted, walking a walk as smooth and confident as she could make it.  I fell into step two feet behind and to her right, expression blank.  Playing the security guard to the VIP.</p><p>No one stepped out of any of the cubicles.  No one shouted for us to stop.</p><p>Somewhere far below us, there was a brief wail of an alarm, quickly cut off.  Then an impact, hard enough that the windows rattled.</p><p>I jumped.  Eva glanced over at me, mouth a narrow line of anxiety.</p><p>We walked a little faster.</p><p>The stairwell was to our left, but Eva walked straight past it without glancing around.  Instead she went to the elevator and pressed the call button, turning to stare around her in apparent boredom as she did so.</p><p>Movement.</p><p>I snapped my head around.</p><p>A guy stepped around the corner.  He looked harmless enough — thinning black hair, business suit — but that didn’t mean anything.  His gaze skimmed over me, and then stopped on Eva.</p><p>Slowly, Eva turned her head and made eye contact with him.</p><p>He decided to turn around and walk the other direction.  At top speed.  While occasionally casting nervous glances over his shoulder as he nearly-ran.</p><p>Apparently he preferred to take the stairs instead.</p><p>Eva looked up at me.  She actually gave a faint smile, because Eva's a madwoman.  But I took her point.</p><p>We had proof now.  Visser One was in charge.  We could use that.</p><p>Goodie for us.</p><p>The elevator slid to a stop behind the doors.</p><p>I blew out a slow breath.  I fucking hated the idea of Eva and I sticking ourselves into a stupid death box suspended from cables to get out of here.  But Visser One was also not the type to take twelve flights of stairs down and get to her destination sweaty and out of breath.</p><p>There were two humans standing inside the elevator.  Human-<em>controllers</em>.</p><p>That much was immediately obvious from the way they froze, mouths hanging open, when they saw Eva.</p><p>The controllers looked at each other.  They looked at us.</p><p>Visser One was supposed to be on Leeran right now, or maybe Sleegab Five.  She’d spent most of the war off-planet.  The thought had almost certainly crossed the minds of the two yeerks staring at us.</p><p>“May the kandrona shine and enrich you,” I said at last.  Just to say something.</p><p>I hadn’t really meant it as a <em> move-along </em>hint — more as a way of showing off what a good little controller I most definitely was — but they took it as a suggestion to get lost.  Both of them scurried off the elevator, only pausing long enough to make a clasped-palm gesture of deference to Eva.  “Ma’am,” they murmured, one after the other.</p><p>Eva watched them go in imperious silence.  And then she stepped into the elevator car.</p><p>I followed her, and pushed the button for the lobby.</p><p>Eva leaned past me, and pushed 4.</p><p>The instant the doors closed, I spun around to look at her.  “No.  Eva.  No.”</p><p>She let out a huge breath, and for the first time I realized she was every bit as scared as I was.  “How many more yeerks do we have to interact with before word gets out that I’m here?  How long will take to get a message to Leera that’ll confirm she’s there?”</p><p>“They wouldn’t.  Not and risk her attention.”</p><p>“Tom.”  Her tone was unyielding.</p><p>Ugh.  Ugh, ugh, ugh.  I squeezed my eyes shut.  She didn’t have to say it: I was grasping at straws.</p><p>“We need to get out of here,” she said.  “Now.”</p><p>She was right.  It was now or never.</p><p>“I don’t wanna go down to the yeerk pool,” I said, petulant because it was better than being scared.</p><p>Eva gave me an exaggerated pout.  “Me neither.”</p><p>But the yeerk pool would have Bug fighters.  And Bug fighters were our best shot for getting out of here.</p><p>We sank toward the fourth floor.  Toward the balcony that surrounded the airy lobby, and the secret concealed behind the top of its thirty-foot decorative fountain.  The simple lever behind the marble instillation would open a door in the far side.  The narrow passage would lead us through the Gleet Biofilter and into the dropshaft beyond.</p><p>Down to the stinking cavern below.  Down until the screams didn’t just echo but filled our ears and our lungs.  Down to the cages that would be filled with crying parents and shrieking children and people from half a dozen species begging for aid that would never come.</p><p>Down to the Bug fighters, stored in the satellite room mere yards away from the dropshaft entrance.  It was our best shot of getting home.</p><p>“Beats waiting for a lightning strike in a stolen DeLorean, right?” Eva said.</p><p>I let out a high-pitched nervous giggle.  “Sure.”</p><p>The elevator let out a <em> ding </em> at our stop.  I jumped.</p><p>“Keep it together,” Eva muttered.</p><p>The elevator doors ground open.</p><p>“Under the circumstances,” I hissed, “I think I’m entitled to a little <em> not </em> keeping of the it in the together.”</p><p>Eva raised her eyebrows, not dignifying that with a response.</p><p>Funny how that Berenson tendency toward near-suicidal bravery deserted me, the moment I could cling to Eva’s skirt hem and let her be brave for the both of us.  I took a deep breath, doing my best to order my thoughts.  We could do this.  We could.</p><p>“Sorry,” I muttered.  “Keeping it together.”</p><p>We stepped into the hall like soldiers entering a combat zone: scanning around corners, crouched low to the ground.  Eva had the dracon beam braced in her right hand with her left palm cupped around her wrist.</p><p>There were people in the concealed atrium outside the yeerk pool entrance.</p><p>We could hear it almost immediately.  Faint sounds of scuffling.  Breaths heavy enough to be taxxons.  The <em> click </em> of hard-soled shoes or talons on the floor.</p><p>We looked at each other.  I tilted my head toward the stairwell, a silent suggestion.</p><p>The elevator was long gone — it’d need to stop in the lobby and linger with its doors open for several seconds before it even thought about coming back to us.  But we could still retreat down to the street outside.  There were plenty of cars out there, and I had all the observational experience I needed to steal one for us.</p><p>Eva shook her head.</p><p>Reluctantly, I nodded agreement.</p><p>We were going to keep up the ruse, then.  Visser One, and one of her bodyguards.  Just long enough to get into the yeerk pool and back to the future.</p><p>And because she was probably in the right, I stepped up to her side.  I still gave her a look that conveyed how I felt about this whole situation.</p><p>She grimaced in sympathy.</p><p>Side by side, we walked around the corner into the concealed atrium above the yeerk pool.</p><p>It wasn’t a squad of hork-bajir-controllers.  It wasn’t ravenous taxxons.</p><p>The threat waiting for us was far, far worse.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. EnemyMart</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>&lt;May I ask a question?&gt; Ax said. &lt;What is the purpose of these submarines?...  What enemy?&gt;</p><p>&lt;Well... okay, we don't exactly have one right now,&gt; I said, feeling fairly idiotic. &lt;But we used to. And we may get one again.&gt;</p><p>&lt;We're shopping all the sales,&gt; Marco said brightly. &lt;Enemies "R" Us, EnemyMart, J.C. Enemy. Don't worry, we'll find one.&gt;</p><p>— <em>In the Time of the Dinosaurs</em>, p. 14</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>No thought.  Instinct. </p><p>I’d spun, swept Eva into my arms, and taken off running before I had time to process what I’d seen.  I was sprinting as hard as I’d ever run in my life, legs churning across the floor.  I couldn’t even feel her weight clasped against my chest, not yet, as if the sheer momentum of yanking her off the floor was still carrying us forward.</p><p>I was running for my life.  For both our lives.  Speed wasn’t hard to find.</p><p>With a bad knee, a scarred lung, and half a dozen replacement ligaments, there was no way Eva would’ve moved fast enough.  I’d apologize to her later, some distant part of me sick with the knowledge that I was moving her body against her will, but for now I needed all my breath to escape.</p><p>I heard it, over my own breaths: the clatter of hooves on the tiles behind us.  Slipping on the linoleum.  Struggling for purchase.</p><p>But still faster than any mere biped.  Especially one hampered by the weight of a second human.</p><p>He was going to catch us.</p><p>No time to make the stairs.  No prayer of the elevator.</p><p>I ran at the plate glass window on the far side of the atrium.</p><p>And the andalite gained on us.</p><p>Not fast enough.  Not enough air in my lungs.  He was running us down.  Closing the distance.  The fractional head start wouldn’t be enough to save us now.</p><p>A pause in the hoofbeats.</p><p>Instinct.  I threw us both to the left.</p><p>And Ax’s tail blade slammed the wall inches from where we’d been.</p><p>I registered, in that millisecond of impact, that he’d hit with the flat of his blade.  That the painful-sounding <em> crack </em>against the wall was because he’d tried to spare us.</p><p>He knew who I was.  Maybe Eva too.  And he’d tried to keep us alive.</p><p>Some part of me filed that knowledge away.  The rest of my body was too busy scrambling forward, trying to regain momentum.</p><p>I dug in.  Lowered my head over Eva.  Ran at the window like a linebacker taking on an entire offensive line alone.</p><p>At the last step before impact, I twisted my body.  My back and side impacted the window, shielding Eva.  I felt my ribcage <em> crunch </em>inward, but the glass broke at the same time my body did.</p><p>We exploded through the window.</p><p>A sickening second of freefall.  I curled myself around Eva, half-bent my knees.</p><p>Forty feet passed in less than a second.</p><p>We slammed the concrete, and every molecule of air in my lungs left me as an unending scream of pain.  No breath replaced it.  My desperate attempt to inhale only drove bone fragments into tissue underneath.  Both my legs were broken, my pelvis, my shoulder.  Ribs.  So many ribs.</p><p>The pain was incomprehensible.  My body could make no sense of it.</p><p>Consciousness tried to escape, wheeling dizzily overhead, before dragging back into the horrible fog of agony that trapped it.</p><p>If I could just— If I could breathe— The pain— The wrongness— If I could get—</p><p><em> Air</em>.</p><p>Eva’d rolled clear from my shattered body.  She was leaning over me on her hands and knees.</p><p>“Small!” she shouted again.</p><p>This time the word made it through.</p><p>I shrank.  Grinding bones liquified.  Shredded skin began to harden.  Organs regrew.</p><p><em> Small</em>.  She’d said it, and so I had to obey.  <em> Small</em>.</p><p>I dragged my body inward, pieces of it left on the sidewalk.  Sneakers and skin and bone fragments and huge splashes of blood.</p><p>Eva scooped me into her arms as soon as I was a half-human half-cockroach two feet in diameter.  She took off, cradling me as I shrank.</p><p>I kept morphing as she ran.  Doing my best to bury myself against the fabric of her sweater.  Focus on being a cockroach.  Focus on the fact that this is Eva, that Eva is safe.</p><p>I was all roach now. And we were moving.</p><p>No, <em> Eva </em> was moving.  She was choosing where to run, where to turn.  And I was carried along with her.</p><p>You wanna know what’s funny about being a zombie?  In some weird way, that scared me worse than a fourth-story fall had.</p><p>“Are you all right?” Eva said.</p><p>At least, that’s what I think it was.  The vibrations were complex and strange, overlapping.  There was interference from her feet on the ground, from the rasp of my antennae against the wool over her arm.</p><p>&lt;I morphed,&gt; I said.  I recognized Jake’s own non-answer in my words, and remembered how much I hated it when he brushed off questions that way.  &lt;How bad are you hurt?&gt;</p><p>“Nothing life-threatening.”  Which was also a non-answer.</p><p>There was a break in her gait.  We’d turned.  I felt the air currents change around us.</p><p>We went through a doorway, I think.  Eva hadn’t gone far before seeking cover.  A good call.  When the next attack came, it’d be from overhead.  Better to stay under a roof, and as close to as many witnesses as possible.</p><p>“You’re okay to demorph now,” Eva said.</p><p>I became human as fast as I could, hating the seconds between shapes where I was a helpless jumble of limbs.</p><p>We were in a public bathroom, green-tiled and mirrored.  All three stall doors were open, revealing empty toilets beyond.</p><p>“Where…?”</p><p>“Hotel lobby,” Eva said.</p><p>“Anyone out there?”</p><p>“A desk clerk and a bellhop.  Both civilians.”</p><p>She was leaning heavily against the row of sinks, gasping hard from the block and a half she’d run.  Her right arm was pressed close to her side and across her lower abdomen.  I couldn’t tell if it was her wrist or her ribs that were hurt, but I could see that her entire face was tight with pain.</p><p>That fall was costing her a hell of a lot more than it’d cost me.</p><p>“They saw us,” I said.  “Back there, they definitely saw us.”</p><p>Eva nodded.  She knew that, of course.  But some part of me still wanted her to contradict me.</p><p>Rachel and Marco had both been mid-morph, and Jake almost entirely human.  I think that was the only thing that’d saved our lives.  The six of them must have dragged themselves upstairs after the raid on the yeerk pool below, probably assuming that the narrow space in the back hallway of an office atrium was safe enough to risk an emergency demorph from bodies so injured they’d soaked the carpet red.</p><p>We’d made eye contact, Jake and I.  For a millisecond we’d frozen like that, staring across the room at each other.</p><p>And then…</p><p>And then…</p><p>“Fuck,” I said.  “<em>Fuck</em>.”</p><p>Eva turned one of the sinks on, scooping handfuls of water into her mouth.</p><p>“They’re going to kill us,” I said, because I kept saying obvious shit out loud.  “They know we saw them morph.  Neither one of us has proof that we’re not controllers.  We can wave our arms and yell ‘time travel’ all we want, and…”</p><p>I wrapped both arms around myself.  This was so fucking stupid.  We were going to get killed over a stupid fucking misunderstanding, and everyone in our own time was going to think we’d just been obliterated by an explosion.</p><p>“Tom.”  Eva grabbed my arm.  “Focus.  We don’t have much time.”</p><p>She was right.  I’d bought us a head start of maybe five minutes at most.  Spiral into frustration later, escape now.</p><p>“We only have to survive until the sario rip runs out,” Eva said.  “So we attempt surrender to them.  They don’t know you can morph, so we can pretend to be unarmed…”</p><p>“None of them saw me morph?” I asked.  Actually trying to think now.</p><p>She shook her head.  “I don’t believe so.”</p><p>Made sense.  Ax had been the only one right behind us, and Ax was the only one who wouldn’t risk leaning out to look into a public street and see how we’d landed.</p><p>“Surrender might work — <em>might </em> — if we catch Cassie in a good mood,” I said.  “But Rachel will kill us anyway, and M—”  I stopped talking.</p><p>“Marco won’t hesitate either.”  Eva finished the sentence for me.  Tone carefully neutral.</p><p>“Jake... Right now he thinks that we’re a threat to his team, and he’s not going to stand for that.”  I shook my head.  “Better idea.  I lead them off the scent, use the fact that they don’t know I can morph, meet back up with you somewhere safe.  We hole up.  If the rip doesn’t unrip itself within a week, then we hop a charter flight to Bora Bora.”</p><p>Eva pretty clearly had opinions about the amount of risk I’d be taking, but she nodded.  “You remember how to get to the site of our first meeting?” she asked.</p><p>Matter Over Mind had lived out of a church basement for its first three months.  The location was a good call — it had no connections to the yeerks, and none to either of us that the Animorphs knew about.  Plus, it had a homeless shelter.</p><p>“I’ll meet you there,” I said.  “Or I won’t, and you’re still probably safe.”  The Animorphs didn’t hold with torture, and they wouldn’t use a yeerk to extract intel from me.  They’d just kill me quickly, and as painlessly as possible.  Silver linings.</p><p>Eva held out her hand.  “If you could use it…”</p><p>I understood what she meant.  And I understood more than that too.  More than I think she wanted me to.</p><p>I’d acquire her DNA, since she was offering.  But I’d also give what she was really asking for, without seeming to know she asked.  A moment of calm.  A breath of peace, without pain.</p><p>A way to help.  To feel less helpless.</p><p>I pressed her hand between both of mine, and I focused.  Some small part of her became a small part of me.  The strange technology floating in my blood learned the shape of her molecules.</p><p>My body took some copy of hers.  And in return, I gave what I could of the gift that had been forced upon me: her breathing evened out, her pulse steadied between my palms, her face became younger as its lines relaxed.  She stepped back, and gently pulled herself loose.</p><p>“Be safe,” Eva said.</p><p>“Yes ma’am.  You too.”</p><p>There was no time for anything else.  I walked back out into the hotel lobby, and clear through to the glass doors.</p><p>There was no need to go outside, really.  They’d track my scent, and even if I stayed here in view of witnesses there’d be no saving me.  They’d have to get creative, sure — western taipan, cone snail, armed spider — but it could be done.  There was no need to go exotic, even.  Three or four black widow bites would do the job just fine, as would a well-placed dose of rattlesnake venom.</p><p>And then they’d go for Eva.</p><p>I inhaled, inhaled again.  Like I was preparing to dive into a pool of water.  When I was lightheaded with oxygen, I shoved both doors open and walked out into the street.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Trust</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>“I trusted Jordan.  I knew in my heart that she was not a controller.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Of course, that’s just what Jake had said about Tom.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>—</span>
  <em>
    <span>The Visitor</span>
  </em>
  <span> p. 39</span>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>I took off down the street.  Moving fast, but not running.  I was headed in the approximate direction of the church, but that wasn’t my goal.</p><p>My goal was to draw out the first attack before they had time to regroup.  If I could string them out enough to force them to confront me one-on-one, I had an okay chance of surviving the day.  If two or three of them got me in a corner…</p><p>I shuddered, and kept walking fast.  Listening hard.</p><p>They were exhausted.  Had just come from a battle.  That had to mean I had a little more time, right?</p><p>I glanced down an alley — it opened on the far end.  I dodged right, walking purposefully.  Still fighting the urge to take off running.  Listening.  Not looking up, no matter how badly I wanted to.</p><p>There.</p><p>It was subtle.  No open cry of challenge.  Just a rustle of feathers.</p><p>Air against talons.</p><p>A deadly projectile.</p><p>At the last second I threw up my forearm, swinging hard even as I ducked my head down.</p><p>“Aaah!”</p><p>Talons crashed into my arm.  They sank deep, puncturing muscle.</p><p>I continued the swinging motion down, before he could let go.  Throwing him straight at the ground with the force of his momentum.</p><p>The move cost me — Tobias tore a chunk of flesh from my forearm.  But it stopped me from losing an eye.</p><p>And it cost him more.  Tobias flared wildly, trying to recover, but he thudded against the alley wall.  Tumbling end-over-end, he slid down the brick wall and hit the ground.</p><p>“Sorry,” I said automatically.</p><p>And then I ran for it.</p><p>Tobias had been the first, but the others couldn’t be far behind.  My only hope was to keep them delayed by how quickly they could morph, how badly they needed to hide.</p><p>I burst out of the far side of the alleyway and ran straight into traffic.</p><p>A sedan in the first lane screeched, brakes locking.  The driver had leaned out his window to yell several doubtless-unflattering things about me, but it was lost in the roar of the tractor trailer’s air brakes.  The truck skidded toward me, the driver desperately trying to shed momentum.  I sprinted to get across the next lane as the truck continued to barrel forward, trailer jackknifing behind the cab.</p><p>The median.  I dove onto it, rolled.  The concrete was unforgiving to any unprotected skin.  Soon it was more than my right forearm covered in blood.</p><p>I stopped there for a second, breathing hard.  Cat and mouse, I reminded myself.  I couldn’t get too far ahead of them, or they’d change tacks and look for Eva.</p><p>But I couldn’t let more than one of them catch up to me, either.  Dying during a sario rip was maybe, arguably, less permanent than dying in one’s own time, but I wasn’t eager to test the andalite scientists’ theory on that one.</p><p>A second shadow cut across the sun.  They had me again.  Time to keep moving.</p><p>The fractional gap between cars wasn’t enough to cross, not really, but I went for it anyway.  Lucky me, the owner of the minivan proved to have fast reflexes and a good brake system.  So did the SUV driver in the next lane over.  I made the sidewalk on the far side.</p><p>The city was waking up.  More civilian witnesses out now.</p><p>More threats, too.</p><p>Walking fast for the underpass, I scanned around me.  None of the faces of people walking by looked familiar, but that meant nothing.  There was a toy poodle in one woman’s purse.  An anole lizard running along a crack in the wall.  Ants on the sidewalk.</p><p>I was staring around so wildly that I knocked into an orange cone set in the middle of the sidewalk and almost fell into the open manhole beyond.</p><p>“Watch it!” someone shouted, and grabbed my arm.</p><p>I wrenched myself loose, staggering back.</p><p>“You okay, son?”  The businessman peered close at me.</p><p>Not an Animorph, almost certainly, but there were also over a hundred thousand controllers in Santa Barbara alone.</p><p>I bobbed my head in a nod.  “Thanks.  Just— Running late for—”</p><p>Unable to come up with an end to that sentence, I turned and walked fast for the underpass.</p><p>No more seagulls overhead, I noted.  Pigeons all gone too.  The sky was empty except for one sharp-winged silhouette.  The one that had scared all the other birds away.</p><p>Peregrine falcon.</p><p>It wheeled in a hunting pattern, round and round.  Only there was nothing to hunt on the road below, all the prey birds having fled.  Nothing to hunt… except for me.</p><p>Jake wouldn’t risk it.  Not with this many civilians around.  They wouldn’t come for me as andalites or tigers or even raptors.  The most firepower they could get without sacrificing all cover would be—</p><p>“Is that a <em> wolf</em>?” a girl said behind me.</p><p>As if I had conjured it by thinking too hard.</p><p>I sprinted for the underpass.  If I could just get under the bridge, get out of sight, I could lose them long enough to… to…</p><p>“No, sweetie, it’s just a big dog,” a man said to the girl.  Goddamn Californians.</p><p>Running hard.  Fuck morning rush hour.  I shoved people aside, using elbows and hard speed to brute-force my way through the crowd.  I hit against bodies.</p><p>Several shouts of “watch it” and “asshole” followed me.  But I also heard people looking down, and noticing that big oddly-shaped dog.</p><p>Fuck.  Fuck.</p><p>I ran across a crosswalk.  The underpass was less than a block ahead.  I wasn’t going to lose Cassie — please let it be Cassie — by then.</p><p>The sidewalk went cool underfoot.  The shade of the bridge was overhead.</p><p>A strange shadow-world.  Graffiti, a few tents.  Cars overhead like distant thunder.  No one here but me.</p><p>Me, and the relentless predator padding toward me.  Light on its feet, in spite of being over a hundred pounds of muscle and tooth.  This was no dog.  The hairs on my arms standing on end would have known that, even if the newest parts of my primate brain put up inanities like <em> pet </em> and <em> fetch</em>.</p><p>“Hey, Cassie,” I said.  “I really, seriously, don’t want to hurt you.  Let’s talk, okay?”</p><p>It was easy, too easy, to let the tremor into my voice.  To have wide eyes and hands that shook as I held them between myself and the wolf.  Probably that was all unnecessary.  She could smell my fear just fine.</p><p>But I had to look human.  And to hope that that would be enough for Cassie to decide to let me live.</p><p>&lt;Guess again, yeerk.&gt;</p><p>I stumbled back a step.  Marco.  Shit, shit, shit.</p><p><em> Marco won’t hesitate</em>.  Eva’s own words.</p><p>Okay, new plan.  New plan, new plan, new plan…</p><p>New.  Plan.</p><p>Um.</p><p>&lt;You wanna talk?&gt;  Marco advanced another step.  &lt;You start, by telling me how <em> exactly </em> you survived that fall.&gt;  He cocked his head to one side.  &lt;And why you ditched your shoes in the process.&gt;</p><p>He was looking me over as he said it.  Looking.  Unusual for a wolf.  But I could tell what he was paying attention to: the skintight shirt and exercise pants I wore.  The lack of shoes, as he’d just noted.  The lack of broken bones as well.</p><p>Dammit.  I was going to have <em> words </em>with Eva later about whatever the fuck she’d been feeding that kid, because he was too damn smart for his own good.</p><p>“Okay,” I said, “it’s a long story.  And you’re not going to believe me.  But if you just listen, I can explain.”</p><p>&lt;That’s not an answer.&gt;  As he said it, one ear flicked away, and then back to me.  He was listening for something.  He was stalling me, waiting for the others to arrive.  Using me.</p><p>Crap.  I backed up further, not that that was going to help much.  “We could wait three days, and then you’d believe me.  I’m happy to do it, I swear.”</p><p>&lt;So that Visser One has time to expose us all?&gt;  Marco tilted his head back the other way.  &lt;Where is she, anyway?&gt;  He was doing his best to sound tough and nonchalant about the question, but I wasn’t fooled.</p><p>I snorted.  “What makes you think I’d ever give up your mom’s location that easily?”</p><p>Marco gave a full-body twitch.  &lt;I’m going to kill you whether or not you tell me.  It’s nothing personal.  Also, tell Tom I really am sorry about that.&gt;</p><p>“I’m not who you think I am,” I said.  “I can prove it, if you just give me the chance—”</p><p>&lt;Your <em> chance </em> is to tell me where Visser One got off to.  After that I’ll see what I can do.&gt;</p><p><em> Stop thinking like Cassie</em>, I ordered myself.  <em> Think like Marco</em>.</p><p>“Do you believe in time travel?” I said.</p><p>And then I started to morph.</p><p>Marco watched me, stiff-kneed, ear-flattened.  Waiting, no doubt, for the moment to spring.  The moment I was most vulnerable between bodies.</p><p>Only I wasn’t morphing that far.  And I could control it enough to ensure I didn’t take my eyes off of him for a second throughout the entire change.</p><p>I finished.</p><p>Marco sat down on his butt.</p><p>“Sorry, man.”  I shrugged.  “I was trying to avoid a time paradox if I could.”</p><p>&lt;Jake?&gt; Marco whispered.</p><p>“Yeah.”</p><p>&lt;Prove it.&gt;</p><p>Yeah, I’d known that was coming.  “One time when we were in third grade, you dared me to drink an entire blue slushie in one go, and I barfed everywhere.  The only time we ever went to that construction site before… you know… was when I climbed to the top of that crane and you stayed on the ground and kept yelling up about what an idiot I was.  You are actually better at Atari than me, even if I don’t want to admit it.”</p><p>Marco pushed to his feet, watching me.  Expression unreadably canine.</p><p>I took a breath, trying to dig up tidbits from babysitting this kid.  Trivia from his memoir.  (Yeah, I'd actually read his memoir.  Don’t tell him that.)</p><p>“You complained a lot about acquiring a wolf spider, but you said being a wolf spider was actually really cool.  You also complained about that morph.”  I jerked my chin at his current shape.  “We had to draw straws over who would take the male wolf.”</p><p>So far he was giving me nothing.  Asshole.</p><p>Come on, brain, come on.  What would only Jake know?</p><p>Probably loads of shit I couldn’t come up with, because <em> only Jake would know it</em>.</p><p>At least I wasn’t fidgeting or looking away, because those weren’t really things that I did.  And Jake's voice was coming out of my mouth.  That had to help.</p><p>“You lived in the house on the corner with the blue shutters until fifth grade,” I said.  “One time about a year after you moved out, I caught you sleeping on its back porch, like we used to do when we were little and your dad would set up the tent out there.  You ended up spending the night at our house.  In the morning my mom tried to make bran muffins using your mom’s recipe.  You didn’t even try them, told her she’d done it wrong.  When she started to apologize, you left without saying anything else.”</p><p>This time it was Marco who took a step back.</p><p>That last story hadn’t appeared in any memoir, of course.  And Marco wasn’t aware that I’d witnessed the scene over the breakfast table, because I’d been lurking at the top of the stairs waiting for him to leave at the time.  I’d been a dick at fifteen, treating the kid with the dead mom like a social pariah because I wasn’t sure how else to respond to him.</p><p>Of course, if he really thought it through then he’d figure out that I hadn’t conclusively ruled out being our mom or, well, <em> me</em>.  But I’d found a soft place, and I’d jammed the knife in deep.</p><p>Yay, me.</p><p>&lt;Jake?&gt; he said again.</p><p>“Yeah.”</p><p>&lt;Jake.&gt;  He tilted his head at me.  &lt;You’re older.&gt;</p><p>“By a year or two, yeah.”  Because that’s when I’d acquired him.  Don’t ask me how that works, because I have no clue.</p><p>&lt;Time travel.  Seriously?  Time travel.  Like that thing with the dinosaurs?&gt;</p><p>Oh <em> thank god </em> they’d already done the thing with the dinosaurs.  “I think so.”</p><p>Marco started to say something else, and then stopped.  &lt;Jake, what did I say to you just before we went down into the yeerk pool for the first time?&gt;</p><p>Fucking <em> hell</em>.</p><p>Buying time, I rolled my eyes.  “Some sarcastic comment, I don’t remember.  I was just worried about Cassie at the time.”  I took an educated guess.  “And Tom, for that matter.”</p><p>&lt;Yeah, I did a lot of that.&gt;  Marco’s tone was so neutral I couldn’t tell if I’d done it or not.</p><p>And then another thought.  A fragment of memory.  Marco, older Marco, the Marco from my time, in the throes of the fever from that tribble-thing.</p><p>“Was that when…?”  I watched him carefully.  “When you made me promise that I’d kill you if I had to.  To prevent you from becoming a controller.”</p><p>Marco was silent for several seconds.  And then,  &lt;Jake.  It’s really you.&gt;</p><p>I nodded.</p><p>&lt;Shit, man.  Time travel?&gt;</p><p>I nodded again.  I wasn’t sure how long I could keep this up.</p><p>No.  Not true.  I knew exactly how long I could keep it up: another hour and fifty minutes.  At most.</p><p>&lt;How do I know you’re not a controller?&gt;</p><p>“Think about it.”  I looked him over.  “If there were controllers who could morph, don’t you think you’d know about it by now?”</p><p>Marco nodded.</p><p>I waited.  He continued to watch me carefully.</p><p>&lt;How’d you end up here?&gt;</p><p>“Sario rip.  I think.  There was an explosion, and next thing Eva and I knew, we were here.”</p><p>&lt;She came with you?&gt;</p><p>All the best lies were at least 80% true.  “I was working with her.  She’s not a controller anymore, and she’s been trying to help the hosts.  We got a mail bomb, I was stupid enough to open it, now we’re here.  Either the hybrid tech caused a sario rip, or it killed us both and this is all a really crappy afterlife.”</p><p>&lt;Why were you in morph as Tom, then?&gt;</p><p>“There’s a ton of yeerk tech coded to his DNA.  Vis— The, uh, yeerk inside him.  Was the head of security for the invasion force, and I got his permission to use it to bypass some of their biometrics.”  That sounded logical, right?</p><p>&lt;Uh-huh.&gt;  Marco didn’t sound convinced.</p><p>“I’ll explain everything.  I promise.  Can we go somewhere more sheltered?  It doesn’t have to be Cassie’s barn.”</p><p>&lt;You going to cause the universe to collapse if you interact with your younger self?&gt;</p><p>I shrugged.  “Dunno.  Think we should probably ask Ax first.”</p><p>&lt;Yeah, and what're the odds he knows?&gt;</p><p>"Uh."</p><p>&lt;Cool.&gt;</p><p>“Then can you demorph so that we can get out of here without attracting the attention of every controller in the county?” I said.</p><p>Marco stared at me.</p><p>My heart pounded.  I didn’t know if he could hear it.</p><p>&lt;Just so you know, dude, we’re going to spend the next three days watching you.&gt;  He was shifting.  Starting to demorph.</p><p>"Yeah, obviously.  That's a good idea."</p><p>He was morphing slowly.  Every line of his body was taut.  His ears were rolled forward, nose flared.  He knew how vulnerable he was.</p><p>I kept my hands loose and open, my posture relaxed.  Just Jake, hanging out and watching as Marco demorphed.</p><p>He stood up when he was fully human.  “It’s you.”</p><p>I wasn’t sure what made him say that.  Maybe getting a look at my face with human eyes, and confirming that my features were definitely Jake’s.  Maybe the fact that he had gotten through the morph unharmed.</p><p>Either way, he immediately turned away and started to walk out from under the bridge.</p><p>The moment his back was to me, I lunged.</p><p>I underestimated the clumsiness of Jake’s body, nearly tripping.  But I got one arm around Marco’s chest, and the other clamped over his nose and mouth.  I lifted him clear off the ground, staggering backward under his weight.</p><p>He was struggling, clawing at my hands.  And he was growing steadily heavier.</p><p>But I was pinching his nose shut and blocking his entire mouth with the palm of my hand.  Black fur sprouted up his arms, and then receded.  Muscles rippled and misaligned, not coalescing.</p><p>I squeezed tighter around his throat.  His concentration broke, the changes stopping.  "Sorry," I muttered, even though I doubted he heard.</p><p>He was struggling more weakly.  He’d gouged the back of my hand, but now his slackening fingers couldn’t find purchase.</p><p>I barely breathed.  Feeling his heartbeat.  Feeling his tremors under my skin.</p><p>If I held on too long, I’d kill him.  If I let go too soon, he’d kill me.</p><p>He went rigid, and then he went limp.</p><p>I held on another breath.</p><p>I released him, and lowered him to the ground.</p><p>His eyes were rolled back, bloodstained whites showing under his lids.  He took another breath.</p><p>I ran.</p><p><em> Fuck </em>but Jake was a klutz.  Knowing objectively that I’d gotten all the athletic genes was a different business from trying to run with knees that didn’t move the way I expected them to and a sense of balance that was somewhere between cruel and nonexistent.  The biggest problem was that it felt so close to my own body.  Give me half an hour to get used to it and I’d probably move around just fine, but instead I felt like myself but slightly distorted.</p><p>Might have been safer to remain as Jake.  Definitely faster to move as myself.</p><p>I demorphed even as I ran.  Ankles, knees, wrists, spine.  Facial features last of all.  I was headed back the way I’d come — the crowd was my friend.  The witnesses could keep me alive.</p><p>Maybe.  I hoped.</p><p>We were in the downtown of Santa Barbara, a handful of blocks south of the financial district.  I walked, not running now, staggering with fatigue.  The foot traffic around rush hour was still going strong.  Good.</p><p>Marco back there.  Jake somewhere overhead, if he hadn't demorphed and remorphed already.  Tobias and Ax had doubtless also had time to regroup.</p><p>I was wearing out.  It had been a long <em> long </em>thirty minutes since I’d opened that stupid package.</p><p>One more morph, I thought.  Just one more.</p><p>Eva, this time.  Not all the way, just enough to disguise myself.  And then through a bar, somewhere else that I could lose my scent.  On to Eva herself.</p><p>I focused, and the first of my bones began to realign.  Clenching my jaw against exhaustion, I pictured her bobbed hair, her narrow frame.  The sardonic smile she pulled out as needed, and the genuine one that was always gone in a flash when she realized it was happening.  Eva.</p><p>A kid jerked around to look at me from underneath a red beanie, frowning.  Like he’d just caught me shrinking three inches in a matter of seconds out of the corner of his eye.</p><p>I gave him my best imitation of Eva’s <em> fuck-off </em>smile.</p><p>And then I swung down the nearest alleyway.</p><p>And froze.</p><p>He was facing away from me.  Listening hard with his head tilted to the side.  Human, at least for now.  Waiting for his team to tell him where he was needed, and in what morph.</p><p>I took step backward.  Another.</p><p>Jake spun around to look at me.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. This Time Around</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Jake nodded. "This time around I won't make mistakes."</p><p>"Don't tell me that," I said. "You want a zero-screwup fight?"</p><p>"I got Rachel killed. Wouldn't you like me to keep that from happening to you?"</p><p>"Yeah, I really would. But you start thinking that way, and that's when you'll get me killed. You have to trust your instincts, not your doubts. I'll trust my life to your instincts. If we're fighting again you have to be able to make the same kind of crazy, reckless, ruthless decisions you made before. We beat an empire, my friend, the six of us, and we did it in large part because you didn't know any better than to trust your own instincts."</p><p>— <em>The Beginning </em>p. 135</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>My breath caught.  Jake looked… tired.  And young.  And scared.  So, <em>so </em>scared.</p><p>But after a second his expression shifted, brows drawing together in a faint frown of confusion.  As if…</p><p>As if he didn’t recognize me.</p><p>I’m honestly not sure what I looked like in that moment.  Put a 41-year-old Mexican soccer mom in the blender with a 20-year-old Ashkenazi basketball player.  Account for the fact that she’s 5'1" to my 6’4”.  Figure out the sex difference.</p><p>At best, I was an androgynous mixed-race thirtysomething.  More likely, I was a Picasso-worthy mismatch of features with at least a few body parts wildly out of proportion to each other.</p><p>Before Jake’s confusion could resolve itself enough for him to put together why at least some of my features probably looked familiar, I went on the offensive.</p><p>“You okay, kiddo?” I said.</p><p>“Oh, uh.”  Jake smiled politely.  Didn’t comment on the strange, awkward words I’d produced with misaligned jaws.</p><p>“Do you need some help or something?”  I took a step forward.  “If there’s someone I can call…”</p><p>He took a step back.  It was working.  “No.  Thank you.  I’m fine, thank you.”</p><p>“You got somewhere you can go, sweetie?”</p><p>“Yes.”  Firmer now, regaining confidence.  “I’m waiting for a friend.”</p><p>“Well, okay.”  I held up both hands in a gesture of apology.  One was a shade browner than the other, and their fingers were all different lengths.  “If you’re sure.”</p><p>“Thank you.”  Jake nodded pointedly, in the way people do to end conversations.</p><p>“Kid?”</p><p>Jake sighed.  “Yes?”</p><p>I opened my mouth.  It wouldn’t be the same ploy as I’d pulled on Marco, not quite.  Maybe just an appeal to the fact that, I knew perfectly well, he didn’t want me dead.</p><p>A chance for him to give me a chance.  For him to give me three days.  I’d happily spend that long tied to a chair in a basement somewhere, if that’s what it took.</p><p>If nothing else, I wanted to tell him that it'd be okay.  That he was going to make it.  That it hurt, and it was exhausting, but it wasn't hopeless.  He just had to hang in there, keep fighting, and it'd be okay in the end.  I wanted to tell him not to give up.  The way he'd once told me.</p><p>But I couldn’t trust that they wouldn’t go after Eva while they had me.  And I knew that Eva’s chances of keeping safe from the yeerks were a hell of a lot better with me around.</p><p>Jake was still waiting for me to say something.</p><p>Decision time.</p><p>“Trust in Jesus,” I said, “and he’ll save your soul when judgment day comes.”</p><p>It was the least <em>me</em> thing I could think of off the top of my head.</p><p>Sure enough, Jake visibly gritted his teeth even as he gave me another smile-and-nod.  I could see him concluding that he did not have time for this conversation right now, exactly the way I was hoping he would.  And he was paying me no more attention than it took to find a way out of this, glancing toward the opening at the far end of the alleyway.</p><p>“Have a blessed day!” I called, even as he politely, pleasantly, ran for it.</p><p>I stepped out of the opposite end of the alleyway, back the way I’d come.  Excellent.  Now I just needed to haul my ugly asymmetrical ass over to the nearest subway station and—</p><p>My half-changed body was slammed into the street.</p><p>The second wolf had come from nowhere.  I had no idea how they’d gotten the drop on me, just that I was rolling into traffic.  I rolled, scraping the pavement.</p><p>Yet another car screeched to a stop.</p><p>Even before it was done moving, the driver had half-risen, throwing it into park and pulling off his seatbelt.</p><p>All this I caught in a glimpse.  Because I was rolling over to face the real threat.</p><p>Funny, isn’t it.  How altering your face can fool a human, but if your scent doesn’t change…</p><p>The wolf snapped at my arm, teeth catching skin.  Not Marco — there was no time — but an identical copy of that same morph.  I wrenched myself loose, and the canine body hit the road with a yelp so doglike that I actually felt a second of guilt.</p><p>“Hey!”</p><p>Ah shit, the good Samaritan was out of his car and trying to intervene.</p><p>“Hey, leave him alone!”  He was waving his arms at the wolf.  “Get out of here, you mutt!  Shoo!”</p><p>The wolf looked at the guy.  &lt;Thank you for your concern,&gt; Cassie said.  &lt;Please get back in your car and leave.&gt;</p><p>“Oh my <em>god</em>,” I said, momentarily distracted.  “Do you have any proof at all that he isn’t a controller?”</p><p>Both the guy and Cassie looked at me in surprise.</p><p>I took that opportunity to scramble up and run for it.</p><p>Cassie ran me down.  Of course she did.  It took seconds to corner me against the façade of a bank.</p><p>I pressed against a marble corner, breathing hard.  Demorphing fast.  Half an Eva was no way to go into a fight, not when I was plenty scrappy in my own human skin.</p><p>Cassie didn’t move to attack yet, but she wasn’t going anywhere.  And right about now she was <em>much</em> better armed than I was.</p><p>I glanced over her shoulder at the circle of cones I’d passed earlier.  Beyond her to the street.  At passersby, most of whom were doing their best to avoid looking at us.</p><p>&lt;What did you do to the other one in wolf morph?&gt; Cassie asked.</p><p>“Marco’s fine.”</p><p>A second of stillness at the name.  No doubt she was trying to figure out what all I knew, and how I knew it.</p><p>“Please,” I said.  "Just..."</p><p>&lt;I’m not going to stand by and let you give us to the yeerks.&gt;</p><p>She hadn’t killed me yet, though.</p><p>I dodged off the wall.  She was in my path faster than I could take two steps.  I stepped back to the wall.</p><p>&lt;I also didn’t say I was going to let you escape.&gt;  She stared up at me, wide-eyed.  &lt;We don’t kill if we have to, we’re not like you’ve been led to believe.  But we will defend ourselves, and each other.&gt;</p><p>“Cassie, I don’t want to hurt you either.”  I looked her in the eye, hoping she could hear I was telling the truth.  “All I’m trying to do is protect my best friend.”</p><p>&lt;See, I want to believe you, but I’m pretty sure you just hurt Marco.  And Tobias too.&gt;</p><p>I opened my mouth to answer, and found no words.  She was right.  I had no defense.</p><p>“Hey!  Hey, what’s going on?”  It was the fucking helpful driver again.</p><p>Cassie’s head turned toward him.  Just for an instant.</p><p>I ran for it.</p><p>She whipped back around, but her wild snap missed my side.</p><p>I kept running.  The circle of cones was ten feet away.  Six.</p><p>Cassie was right on top of me, half a pace behind, strong lungs and four legs and relentless endurance, and I wasn’t going to make it, no way no how, she could morph circles around me and I’d just done the one thing that pretty much guaranteed she wasn’t going to let me go because she wouldn’t kill carelessly but she <em>would</em> kill.</p><p>And then I did the one thing that could’ve saved my life in that moment.</p><p>I tripped.</p><p>It was a loose stone thrown up by the construction.  I caught it and went down, looking up at death as she rushed me, landing on top of me with all four paws.</p><p>I don’t know what she saw in my face.  I can guess.</p><p>Either way, she stopped.  She closed her jaws on air.  Her tail lowered in hesitation.</p><p>In that instant, I put both hands on her chest and shoved.</p><p>She actually lifted clear into the air with the force of my thrust.  She flew five feet and landed on her back.  I scrambled forward.  Just as she regained her feet, I dove headfirst into the open manhole.</p><p>I fell.  Ten feet straight down.</p><p>The landing was soft, but I really didn’t want to think about why.  The water that rose up around my waist was thick with sludge.  I could feel rancid air and oily water flowing past me, coming from my right and tugging off to the left.  There was a fork straight ahead, once again judging from the air that way.</p><p>Between the narrow vertical opening and the smell — burning at my sinuses, making the contents of my stomach crawl up my throat — it was exactly what I needed to lose a pursuing wolf.</p><p>I turned, walked two steps toward the source of the draft, and ran face-first into a concrete wall.</p><p>“Fuck!”  I bounced off, throwing out my arms to catch myself.  They slid unpleasantly along the mold-limned metal, but I didn’t go all the way down into the muck.</p><p>I cupped a hand over my aching nose.  I could tell from the steady throb that it was already swelling up.</p><p>Silver linings.  At least I wouldn’t be able to smell as well.</p><p>I ducked this time, and I stepped up.  My foot found the ledge, and I made it under the roof this time in a half-crouch.</p><p>With the bottom edge of the pipe taken into account, the space was barely five feet tall.</p><p>“I’m going to get home to my own time, I’m going to find Jake, and I’m going to punch him in the fucking face for this,” I muttered to myself.</p><p>Hobbling in an awkward crouch, I started wading upstream.</p><p>“And then I’m going to find that mail carrier, and punch them for delivering whatever that was, and then I’m going to punch whichever motherfucker sent the stupid thing in the first place.  If I’ve still got time after that, I’ll go ahead and punch God too.”</p><p>Whining made me feel a little better, but I cut it out soon.  I needed to listen behind me for pursuit.  There was nothing to see down here, and nothing I wanted to smell or feel, but the splashing would be plenty audible when or if someone did come down behind me.</p><p>I trudged forward as quickly as I could, one hand on the tube next to me and the other thrown out to encounter any obstacles before my face could.</p><p>The utter blackness was inconvenient, to say the least.</p><p>Slosh.  Listen.  Keep sloshing.</p><p>My groping fingers found a ladder rung, and I felt the oppressive downpress of the ceiling lift.  I straightened up for a few seconds, staring in wonder at the tiny point of light that came through the finger-hole of the second manhole cap ten feet overhead.  I stretched, pausing to listen again.  Then kept walking.</p><p>Slosh, keep sloshing.  Do <em>not</em> think about what you’re walking through.</p><p><em>Splash</em>.</p><p>I froze, both hands braced on the wall.</p><p>Far back, a distant <em>thud</em>.  And then another.  And then a third.</p><p>They’d come down after me.</p><p>Lips pressed together, breath barely enough to disturb the air, I listened as hard as I could.  A <em>crunch</em> of cartilage realigning.  The ripping hiss of fur or feathers growing where seconds ago there had been none.</p><p>And then shapes moving through the enclosed space.  Larger than humans.</p><p>Two of the sounds grew more distant.  One, I could not deny, was getting closer.</p><p>I groped along the wall.  I’d felt a dozen of them so far, and I just needed— </p><p>There!</p><p>It was an opening barely more than six inches in diameter.  A steady trickle of <em>something </em>flowed out of it into the main sewer pipe.</p><p>Large enough to admit a king cobra.</p><p>My body shrank and compacted, coils pulling tight together even as they formed.  Scales spread over my skin, weak protection against the chill of the pipe.  It wasn’t even that cold down here — reptiles, especially tropical ones, are just wimps about the cold.</p><p>So are Californians.</p><p>As the morph finished and the snake brain came to the fore, my head came up in search of sunlight or warmth.  The snake mind was as cranky as I’d ever felt it.  The air <em>smelled</em>, and it was cold.  But I pushed that aside.</p><p>I ran my head up the wall.  It was easy to find purchase along the corrugated iron, scales catching and pulling at the unevenness of the surface to help give me leverage.</p><p>My snout found the pipe.  I nosed my way in, pulling my tail off the ground and into the opening after me.</p><p>I’d been out of the way mere seconds when the shape came barreling down the tunnel toward me.</p><p>The animal beyond was a searing heat signature in the darkness, filling the sewer like a subway train in its tunnel.  Heavy-furred sides scraped both walls, powerful legs churning through the muck, back nearly touching the ceiling.</p><p>Grizzly bear.</p><p>Suddenly, the cold around me felt colder.</p><p>I couldn’t take Rachel in a fight.  I couldn’t.  The yeerk inside me had tried, and there was still a hastily-cancelled record of my death on file in D.C. to show how well that had gone.</p><p>The freight train of muscle and claw approached.  It was directly outside my hiding place.</p><p>I curled even tighter in the narrow space.</p><p>It thundered past.  Rachel kept going.</p><p>I pressed my head closer to the entrance of the pipe, tasting at the air.  I could hear her moving away, still barreling down the sewer.</p><p>&lt;Anything?&gt;</p><p>I jerked upright at the sound of Jake’s thought-speak voice, bonking my head on the low ceiling of the pipe.  He’d still be outside, of course.  Coordinating the others.</p><p>&lt;What?&gt; Marco answered.</p><p>A wave of relief at hearing his voice, even faint and far away as it was.  I’d perhaps brain-damaged him, but not enough to do more than momentarily inconvenience an Animorph.  If he’d morphed, he was good as new by now.</p><p>&lt;Jake… if we found…&gt;  Tobias was even more inaudible.  Most of the words were almost nonexistent.</p><p><em>Has Visser Three taught you nothing?</em>  I wanted to shout into their connection.  I got why they were calling back and forth so carelessly — they were used to being able to direct their thought-speak to any morphers in the vicinity without worrying about being overheard — but if I’d actually been out to kill them…</p><p>Marco almost certainly said something to that effect.  Because I didn’t hear them again.</p><p>I didn’t hear Rachel either.  The heavy <em>whuff, whuff</em> of the grizzly’s breath and the sloshing roll of her progress were inaudible by now.  She must’ve gotten pretty far away.</p><p>How well did bears hear?  Better than snakes?  I wasn’t sure we’d ever covered that one in school.  Just about now it seemed like a major fucking oversight on the part of the tenth-grade Biology curriculum.</p><p>I waited.</p><p>Rachel, near as I could tell, kept getting further away.</p><p>&lt;Fuck it,&gt; I said to myself.  I could either die in this sewer, or I could try and get back to Eva.</p><p>I braced my tail and lower half in the pipe, spreading out my coils to press against either wall of the narrow metal opening.  I’d need that counterbalance.  From there, I edged my head out into empty air, and then down the wall.  Inching forward, I pressed my scales against the corrugated metal.</p><p>The first six inches of my body were free from the narrow branching pipe, pressed against the curving wall.  Ever so gently, I scooted the next curve of my body forward.  Braced on the wall, lowering myself down its curve.  Bending, sliding, then pulling straight.  In careful segments I rolled down, down, toward the surface of the water.</p><p>No splash.  That was the goal.  No splash.</p><p>Did I mention the water was <em>cold</em>?  And <em>smelly</em>?</p><p>&lt;I hate this,&gt; I said to no one.</p><p>And then I lowered myself in.</p><p>My snout poked above water, the entire length of my body undulating beneath the surface, I swam steadily back the way I’d come.  My goal was that second ladder I’d passed.  I could get up and out of the manhole, make a run for it.</p><p>Still no sounds of Rachel coming back this way.</p><p>I found the ladder.  Got as far as winding up through the first three rungs before it occurred to me that no snake, not even one three times the height of a human, was going to be able to lift that cover.</p><p>Fine, then.  I lowered myself back into the water.  Began to demorph.</p><p><em>Focus</em>, I told myself.  Morph slow, control how it happens.  No splash.  No splash.  No splash.</p><p>There was no splash.</p><p>Instead it was the <em>crunch </em>of my spine realigning that echoed off the ceilings and walls.  And the <em>claaang</em> of the hand I threw out in surprise, whacking against the metal of the ladder.</p><p>Ninety percent human, I froze.  Said a lot of very bad words inside the privacy of my own mind.</p><p>Somewhere down the pipe to my right, there was a splash.  A scraping and sliding.</p><p>An enormous creature, turning around inside the enclosed space.</p><p>Caution was no help. Thrusting to my feet, I dove across the narrow cylinder, feet sliding on the slick floor.  I slammed the ladder with another <em>clang</em>, fingers finding slick metal.</p><p>The <em>whuff, whuff</em> of the behemoth’s breaths was drawing ever closer.  Rachel’s every footfall echoed off the walls, sound forced either direction by the shape of the pipe.</p><p>I scrambled upward, feet finding the bottom rung.  My fingers latched around another rung over my head, yanking me in a pull-up until I cleared three more rungs in one go.  I groped a wild hand overhead, feeling for the metal disc that separated me from escape.</p><p>My fingers brushed against it, and then the freight train hit me from the side.</p>
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<a name="section0005"><h2>5. A Simple, Silly Reason</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Additional warning this chapter for canon-typical body horror.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Tom. He had joined The Sharing for a simple, silly reason: A pretty girl he liked was a member.”</p><p>— <em> The Capture </em>p. 166</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>The impact tossed me clear against the far wall.  A confused second of wet disorientation, not knowing what was wall and what floor, and then I was under the surface.</p><p>I braced both hands on the floor and shoved to my feet, back sliding up the wall behind me.  Water sprayed outward in every direction.</p><p>A mistake.  She found me instantly.</p><p>The second blow caught me across the torso.  Something smashed inside me.  I gasped, keened.  A terrible wrongness soaking my lower abdomen, so wrong my conscious brain couldn’t conceive of it.</p><p>I went down again, shock and fear eating numbness into my face and fingertips.  Pieces sliding loose inside me, hot blood clogging my throat.</p><p>Morph.  The only thing for it.  Morph.</p><p>I twisted down into the water, shrinking once again.  Becoming long and narrow and agile.</p><p>“<em>Hwrrrrrrr-ROOOWR</em>!”</p><p>The grizzly roar was enormous in the enclosed space.  The shock of it froze my brain for several seconds.  Every muscle in my body locked.</p><p>A paw slammed the water inches from my head.  That got me moving again.</p><p>The second paw came down hard even as I rolled away.  It caught me at an angle, sliding off in the slick muck.  I was already much narrower than I’d been ten seconds ago.</p><p>I sank lower, nose above the water, focusing desperately hard.  Snake.  Snake.</p><p>The enormous wet-furred shape charged me.  I rolled, and she thundered past down the pipe.</p><p>Using the few seconds’ head start I’d bought for myself, I frantically finished the morph.</p><p>Snake, snake... And there it was.  The reptile mind was as calm and calculating as ever.  Annoyed with the cold, yes, but possessing none of the puny human’s self-doubt or fear.  Ready to fuck with anyone who fucked with us.</p><p>I froze there.</p><p>Most of my body rested in coils on the floor, only my head floating lightly on the surface.  Waiting for the tension built into the spring-like pull of my body to release so that we could strike.</p><p>Rachel finished turning around.  It’d taken her almost a full minute to do so.</p><p>She charged at me again.  I felt the current of her passage.  I felt as she swung wildly at the space where I had been, and her paws connected with air.</p><p>The snake mind observed all with cold amusement.</p><p>I watched the bear’s huge heat signature bounce around me, slashing at nothing.  She tore at the space, rearing up and slamming down so that the current tossed me end-over-end.  The ladder clanged as she shoved up against it, and then she hit the far wall again.  Cutting a deadly path through air, well above where I sat.</p><p>Another strike.  Another miss.  Mapping the space — and finding no sign of me.</p><p>&lt;Where <em> are </em> you?&gt; she shouted in frustration.</p><p>A small, hysterical part of me wanted to laugh.  Of course Rachel would assume that I’d gone big and bad with my morph.  That was her M.O., after all.</p><p>We were in almost-complete blackness.  I could see her, or at least the general area where she gave off most heat, and I could taste the grizzly’s signature scent.  She had smell and sound to guide her, but the stinking waste and the snake’s comfort with silence were enough to shield me.</p><p>&lt;I could have killed Marco, you know.&gt;  As I spoke, I eased my way back into the entrance of the main sewer pipe, barely rippling the surface.  If I could just get back to that little branch…  &lt;I didn’t.  And Eva could’ve killed you.&gt;</p><p>Rachel growled, low and sharp.  She slammed another paw against the wall.</p><p>&lt;Maybe I shouldn’t be telling you this, but she had a dracon beam in her hand when we bumped into you guys.  She didn’t even try to fire it.  Didn’t even point it your way.&gt;</p><p>I scooted backward again.  Slowly, slowly.  Leaving almost my entire body along the floor, feeling my way with one bunch of coil and then wiggling my spine to pull it up the bricks.  Moving backward away from her, six inches at a time.</p><p>The heat signature of another paw swipe overhead, a deadly comet cutting across the colder air.</p><p>&lt;Shut up!&gt; Rachel shouted.</p><p>&lt;Do you know why that is?  Why Eva didn’t even risk a warning shot?&gt;  As much as anything, I was hoping the thought-speak would distract Rachel from whatever small noises I had to be making now.  It wasn’t like mouth-sounds; you couldn’t triangulate someone’s direction by listening.  You could guess at approximate distance, but that was all.</p><p>&lt;Blah, blah, blah.&gt;  Rachel took another swing at random.  &lt;I am not listening to a fucking <em> snail </em> only brave enough to talk to me while hiding inside my cousin’s skull.&gt;</p><p>Internally, I smiled.  That one would’ve landed, if I’d actually been Essa 412.  &lt;Seems like a weird call for Visser One.  If she was Visser One, that is.&gt;</p><p>Rachel’s paw plunged down.  I dodged to the side.</p><p>Displaced water sloshed against the wall.  The splash of my motion.</p><p>Her second front paw scooped me up like a doll.</p><p>I twisted around in the air, sinking teeth through fur and into skin.  But it was too late.  I was dragged clear out of the water, thrashing at the air, unable to gain purchase.</p><p>She tossed me like a shoestring.  I flew through the air, and impacted.  A wall, the ceiling, the surface of the water.  I don’t know.  I lost all sense of <em> up</em>, rolling end over end.  Eventually I lolled in the water, limp and gasping for air.  Belly-up.</p><p>I tried to twist, dizzy from more than just the tumble.  Could a king cobra be concussed?  Was that a thing?</p><p>&lt;Snake, is it?&gt; Rachel mused.  &lt;Interesting.&gt;</p><p>&lt;Venomous,&gt; I told her on reflex.  &lt;Might want to think about demorphing soon.&gt;</p><p>She laughed silently.  &lt;I’ll take it under advisement.&gt;</p><p>Her heat signature moved away.  She had to know where I was, or where I’d been, but she instead ran at the center of the room.  Her side impacted the ladder, and she huffed in pain or anger.</p><p>Slowly I rolled upright.</p><p>There was a clang of a paw against a rung.  Another clang.  She was… climbing?</p><p>She’d never make it all the way to the top, not in that body.</p><p>Turned out she didn’t have to.  She reared back, and took the manhole cover off with a single swipe of one enormous grizzly paw.</p><p>Light and heat flooded the space, blinding me.  California sun lanced through the pipe, overwhelming the snake’s fragile senses for several precious seconds.</p><p>By the time I’d recovered, her jaws were around my neck.</p><p>I felt the <em> crunch </em> of her bite.  Felt rather than heard it, as a breathless compression.  Her teeth hadn’t gone through me, but it was just a matter of time.</p><p>But I had teeth of my own.  And I wasn’t dead yet.</p><p>I swung around to where she’d bitten me.  Jamming my fangs against the inside of her mouth, I bit down hard on her cheek.</p><p>Working my lower jaw around a wad of flesh, I moved my fangs and bit again.  A third time.  Barely letting go except to grip another biteful of her skin.  A fourth bite, a fifth.  All in the time it took her to try and turn my body over in her mouth.  I walked my fangs across her skin, putrefying fragile flesh.</p><p>&lt;Augh!&gt;  Rachel gagged.  &lt;You fucking —&gt;  She didn’t finish the thought.</p><p>We staggered.  Or rather she did, and I rolled end-over-end.  She dropped me, mouth lolling open.  Her throat was swelling, her tongue already dying in pieces from the neurotoxin.</p><p>&lt;Like I said.&gt;  I was moving fast even as I spoke, dragging my body away from her over the protests of cracked ribs.  &lt;Venomous.  You’ll wanna demorph.&gt;</p><p>Instead she took a step toward me.  One step was all she managed, and then she tripped.  With a <em> thud </em> and a wall of filthy water, her bulk slammed into the ground.  She shoved herself back upright, gagging.</p><p>I heard it all, but I didn’t look back.  I was swimming as fast as my bruised vertebrae would wiggle, heading for that pipe in the wall.  It was my one chance at safety.</p><p>Rachel got upright again.  I felt her movement.</p><p>Swim, swim.  <em> Swim</em>.  The snake mind wasn’t quite afraid, but it was pissed off.  Enough to leave this place and find somewhere less annoyingly loud.  Enough to want to curl up and heal.</p><p>The hole in the wall!  I saw it.</p><p>When I reared back, it was with a silent noise of pain.  The snake growl-hissed in sheer frustration, bracing coils on the floor and flaring out the hood that would, my human mind knew, do nothing at all to deter a grizzly bear.  It went against the predator’s instincts to run away and hide.</p><p>Too bad.  The king cobra mind could be bad-tempered and snobby later.  For now it was far better to listen to the human half of my mind, which was terror-screaming about our odds of winning a fight against Rachel.</p><p>I hooked my first several inches into the hole in the wall.  I pulled my body into the pipe.  It angled upward; I angled with it.</p><p>Turning hurt, a lot.  Grizzly might’ve been the clumsier morph, but a grizzly could take a beating.  I weighed barely twenty pounds, and my body was all spine.  And right about now I felt like a rawhide rope that’d just been used as a chew toy for an angry rottweiler.</p><p><em> Whumph</em>.</p><p>Rachel slammed a paw against the outside of the pipe.  She couldn’t fit her claws in there, nowhere close.  I still scooted several inches deeper inside.</p><p>There was a long pause, during which I tried to catch my breath.  Maybe she was almost as tired as I was.  Maybe she’d leave without killing me, and everybody would win.</p><p>&lt;I don't want to hurt you,&gt; I said quietly.</p><p>And then a human hand plunged into the pipe, strong fingers seizing me around the tail.</p><p>I lashed around, coils stinging with pain, and bit her hard on the back of the wrist.</p><p>Honestly, what had she expected?</p><p>“Motherfucking alien-parasite <em> leech</em>!” Rachel shouted, yanking her hand back.</p><p>I stuck my tongue out at her, even though she couldn’t see it.  &lt;Not a leech,&gt; I said, even though there didn’t seem to be much point.  &lt;Not a yeerk either.&gt;</p><p>Also, I was out of venom, so that bite had been mostly harmless.  But I wasn’t about to tell her that.</p><p>“Little late for trying that line, don’t you thrrrrrrraaaa—?”</p><p>Oh great, she was morphing again.  Presumably something small enough to fit down this pipe, but nasty enough to take me on in close quarters.</p><p>Keep moving, I told myself.  My human mind didn’t really want to go further down that pipe, but there was nothing else for it.</p><p>I pushed off, hard muscle and scale shoving against cool metal.  My tongue quested at the air, smelling my way forward.  Up and around the S-bend.  Down the long straightaway.  Forward, forward.</p><p>Twice I passed turnoffs even smaller than the pipe I was down.  It was like being inside the branches of an enormous tree.  Or within blood vessels of some enormous organism.  The third time, I turned right and continued down the narrower opening.</p><p>Three more turns, all to the right.  Some pipes wider, some narrower.</p><p>It worked.  I lost her in the maze.</p><p>Another turn.  Always going right, in the hope that I’d end up circling around to the big main pipe I’d started in.</p><p>I lost all sounds of Rachel, pretty soon.  I lost my sense of direction, some time after that fourth turn.  I lost a clear sense of right and left, up and down.  I lost all orientation except to the pipe, and my body inside the pipe.</p><p>Worse, so much worse.</p><p>I lost track of time.</p><p>*****************</p><p>Blackness around me.  Metal in all directions.  The darkness and cold bothered me now, let me tell you, in a way they hadn’t before.</p><p>This current pipe was closer.  No room to turn around.  I could wiggle forward, probing at the air with my little forked tongue.  Or I could stop, and wait to be trapped there, wait to die.  Those were my options.</p><p>&lt;Get back to Eva,&gt; I told myself.  &lt;Get to that church, find Eva, and get a hot air balloon back to Kansas.&gt;</p><p>The pipe was so much narrower now.  No matter which way I turned my head — side to side, up and down — there was only more unforgiving metal.  Cold and stinking and closing around me.</p><p>Forward, I told myself.  Forward.  You <em> will </em> come out to an open area.  You <em> will </em>find room to demorph.</p><p>A dead end was more likely.</p><p>The pipe had gotten narrower and narrower as I’d gone, its walls pressing on my sides.  Soon I was going to lose the ability to wriggle forward.  Soon I wouldn’t have enough momentum to bend and straighten, pushing myself forward.  Soon I’d be trapped.</p><p>If I wasn’t trapped already.</p><p>It could be worse.  King cobras lived over 20 years, if well-fed and minimally stressed.  They didn’t have the overwhelming instincts of prey animals or desperate hunters.  They could see well, smell even better.</p><p>No opposable thumbs.  No vocal cords.  No <em> limbs</em>.</p><p>The air had gone bad.  It was becoming more and more obvious.  I was sucking air though my nose, but none of it was reaching my lungs.  Instead it was racing through my body faster and faster, giving me none of the sustenance I needed.  It was running out.  No oxygen inside.  Or too many fumes.  Had to be.  Had to be.</p><p>This was it.  I was going to die here.  I was going die of asphyxiation, and maybe I’d wake up back in my own time.  They said if you died in a sario rip it could be overwritten.  So maybe…</p><p>I twisted and rolled within the pipe, shoving forward as fast as my damaged body would move.  Desperate to breathe.  If I could just get more room, if I could just take a full breath—</p><p>It would kill me.  I would die here, a tube within a tube, encased in a body cast of metal.  Miraculous I hadn’t passed out yet, given…</p><p>&lt;It’s not the air, you idiot,&gt; I said.  &lt;You’re panicking.&gt;</p><p>And it <em> was </em> panic.  I’d felt it before, just not in this body.</p><p>Hyperventilation was something human minds did, usually to human bodies.  A good idea when, say, running from grizzly bears.  Worse than useless right now.</p><p>Knowing what was happening didn’t really help.  But at least I wasn’t really suffocating.  Just felt like I was.</p><p>I knew what I had to do.  I knew.  Cassie, Jake, Marco, they all agreed on the solution to this kind of situation.  But I’d never done it before, and in a way it scared me worse than being crushed to death inside a pipe.  Worse than slowly wasting away in a body not my own.</p><p>I breathed in as much air as the little snake lungs would hold.  I recited the starting lineup of the Lakers, including each player’s scoring record for the 2000 – 2001 season.  I thought of Eva, of Bonnie, of Mom and Dad and Jake.</p><p>And then I relinquished control.</p><p>The king cobra was calm, as always.  This situation was inconvenient, nothing more.  And the snake mind knew what to do.</p><p>Scent the air, feel its currents.  Move toward warmth, even if we could only sense the faintest traces of difference.  Find the flow where pipes met each other.  Go whichever direction had more air flowing through it.</p><p>Human concepts like <em> north </em> and <em> south</em>, like the way we’d come and the way we meant to go, were stupid and arbitrary anyway.  Feel the air, follow the air.</p><p>Find warmth.  Find prey.  Find a nice tree to shelter in.  Find light.  Find the sun.</p><p>And to do that, follow the traces of warmth on the air.</p><p>I lost more time.  Drifting along inside the snake mind was easier in its own way than it might’ve been with a different morph.  The king cobra cared nothing for the petty concerns of mammals, especially those too large to eat.</p><p>Find somewhere comfortable, then curl up and rest.  Eat if possible.  Sleep if not.  Find the sun.</p><p>Most of all, ignore the nattering little human as he cries and despairs.  Ignore the shivering  primate too stupid to know that these days it’s an apex predator.</p><p>I flowed from pipe to pipe.  Confident and graceful and laconically deadly once more.  I didn’t know where I was going, other than that at every juncture I turned toward more air, more warmth.</p><p>I almost missed it when it happened.</p><p>The shift in air currents was nothing that interested the snake mind, after all.  Just cold air, blowing from some open space…</p><p>Open space.</p><p>I turned my head, following the air.  Moving fast, trying not to break into an all-out panicked writhe for the exit.  If it even was an exit.  And if it wasn’t, I was fine.  It was fine.</p><p>My head, and then the rest of my length, emerged into an open space.  I flowed down the wall, feeling for the floor — there.</p><p>Enough space for a human body.</p><p>Human.  Body.  I could feel it.  I could remember it.  I was focusing with all my might on becoming human… and nothing was happening.</p><p>I’d spent a lifetime in that pipework.  Hours.</p><p>Hours.  Plural.  I’m not sure how many, but it was far past the point of exhaustion for the snake.  Far past the human mind’s ability to understand.  Far past...</p><p>&lt;Please,&gt; I whispered, not sure who I was talking to.  &lt;<em>Please</em>.&gt;</p><p>Human.  Human.  Fingernails and elbows and soft skin and hair.</p><p>Finally, finally, I felt the scales part along my left side, mammal skin just starting to bulge through.  It disappeared, the gap closing.  I bore down, clenching jaws not meant to clench, and it reappeared.</p><p>It was hard.  And ugly.  I was grateful for the blind darkness, because <em> feeling </em>what was happening to my body was bad enough.</p><p>The first change was my lungs, of all things.  They ballooned outward, suddenly warm-vesseled.  Suddenly cramped and torn by the tiny snake ribs that could no longer contain them.  They grew, and grew, and when I gasped in a breath several of my snake ribs broke like twigs.</p><p>I would’ve screamed if I’d had the air for it.</p><p>Next the scales along my underside shrank and disappeared.  My snake skin followed, peeling backward into z-space.  Nothing replaced it, raw organs scraping the filthy ground.</p><p>Morphing isn’t supposed to hurt.  Isn’t <em> supposed </em>to.</p><p>And it didn’t actually hurt, not really.  But the feeling of<em> wrongness </em> was so intense that my brain couldn’t interpret it any other way.</p><p>I was scared, so scared it was almost impossible to focus on my human self.</p><p>It’d been too long.  I didn’t know how long, but morphing had never been like this before.  It’d come easy to me.  It’d been an almost-manageable level of disgusting.  And now…</p><p>With a <em> crunch</em>, my vertebrae crumpled together, crushing each other as over three hundred bones gracelessly crammed themselves into space meant for a mere thirty-three.  My spinal cord tangled somewhere in there, a sharp burst of pain followed by a sucking nothingness as my lower half went numb.</p><p>There was nothing for it but to bear down on the image in my mind.  Limbs.  Fingers.  Soft human lips, dark human hair.</p><p>I made a sound, high-pitched breathless noise that was inhuman and definitely not snake either.  My body rolled into the water, still limbless even though it now bore a twisted mass of bones drawn from a human skeleton.  Half a mammal jawbone erupting from the side of the snake’s skull.  A single kneecap embedded halfway down my tail.</p><p>With every breath I took, my shifting and slow-growing intestines dragged directly across the concrete floor.  My unsupported lungs fluttered, searching for a diaphragm that didn’t exist.</p><p><em> You could go back</em>, a tiny part of my mind whispered.  <em> All this will end, if you just go back to snake.  You’ll die if you keep morphing.  But if you give in... </em></p><p>If it was my conscience speaking, then my conscience sounded a hell of a lot like Temrash 114.</p><p>&lt;Fuck you,&gt; I told myself.</p><p>I closed my eyes, even though there was nothing to see.  No way out but through.</p><p>I imagined dribbling up the school gym’s bright-painted floor, an informal half-court marked out in green lines.  Just a casual game, one-on-one, me and Kit Rodriguez while the other guys lounged on the bleachers and trash-talked us.  The precise <em> pock-pock </em> of the ball on the court, the squeak of sneakers against hardwood.  Imagined the smooth flow of my legs as I ran, the coordination that let the ball become a part of me even as it barely brushed the tips of my fingers.  Imagined tearing my shirt off in victory following a successful jump shot, baring the sweaty skin and wiry muscle underneath.  Pictured that skin, that muscle.</p><p>And then it was Bonnie who rose to the surface of my mind.  Pressing cool fingertips to the inside of my elbow: <em> this isn’t you.  This changes… and you remain</em>.</p><p>She held me there in the dark.  <em>Mine, </em>I'd whispered at her guidance, of the nails and ribs and mammal blood that I had fought so hard to reclaim.  <em>Mine.</em></p><p>Slowly, painfully, that collection of body parts emerged.  And I was myself once more.</p>
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<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Waiting for You</h2></a>
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    <p>"Tobias."</p><p>I turned. Marco was looking at me.</p><p>He kept his voice low. "Look, I know what you're doing. Mapping out suicidal rescue missions, right? But you can't go near your mom. She's bait, okay? They know who she is. They're watching her. Waiting for you. She's probably already a controller."</p><p></p><div class="page">
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      <p>&lt;You don't know that.&gt;</p>
      <p>"Yeah. I do know that. I lived that. Getting yourself killed won't help her."</p>
      <p>I looked away. He was right, of course.</p>
      <p>—<em>The Diversion</em>, p. 64</p>
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</div><p> </p><p>I fell asleep, when I was done morphing.  I know that sounds completely ridiculous, but the truth is that I was worn down to nothing after the morning I’d had.  For an untold length of time I lay there, just far enough up the curve of the pipe to keep my head from the sewage-polluted water, and slept without dreams.</p><p>When I woke, it was with a jerk.  There had been a noise far overhead.</p><p>“That’s it, I’m never morphing again,” I announced to the darkness.  “I’ll die in this stupid pipe if I have to, I don’t care, but I am <em> not</em>—” I jabbed a finger at the air for emphasis.  “Morphing.  Again.  Ever.”</p><p>The only response was a faint dripping sound from somewhere in the far distance.</p><p>“Just so we’ve got that clear,” I added.</p><p>And then I picked a direction at random and started walking.</p><p>“It’s a pipe big enough for humans to walk in, and it’s less than half-full of gross water,” I said out loud.  “Therefore, it must have exits to manholes.  Or at the very least to the ocean.  Either way, there’s a way out.  Guaran-fucking-tee it.”</p><p>I walked, hands out, eyes uselessly open.  Totally not freaked out.  At all.</p><p>“It’s designed for people to walk down here.  Has to be.  Which means that there has to be a way for the people to get in and out.  Yep.”</p><p>I kept babbling that way for a while.  When I stopped talking, it was because I could no longer ignore the dryness in my mouth.  Between that and the ache at the back of my throat that’d spread its way clear up to my skull, I knew I’d have to get out of here soon.</p><p>I walked until I could feel my toes get pruney from the water.  I walked until the ache from my spine had spread clear to my fingertips from the hunched-over posture I’d adopted.  I waked until the thirst was bad enough that I seriously, no-joke, like a dumbass, entertained the thought of drinking some of the sludge that was drifting by my ankles.</p><p>And then the ceiling pressing my head down toward my chin suddenly ended.  I snapped upright in surprise, so sharply that I almost fell.</p><p>An opening.</p><p>My fingers quested, found the ladder.</p><p>I shot up the rungs so fast I almost whacked my head on the manhole cover.  That’s how eager I was to get back to sunlight and sky and air that didn’t reek of piss.</p><p>Luckily, these things are designed to open from the inside.  It wasn’t hard to get a grip, standing on the top rungs of the ladder, and brace my shoulders against the cover.  I shoved upward, and the cover rolled free to clatter on the ground.</p><p>“Shit!” I snapped, throwing an arm over my eyes so sharply I almost fell off the ladder.  The light of neon bar signs and streetlamps was excruciating after so long in the dark.</p><p>After a minute, and several more bad words, I eased my eyes open a millimeter at a time.</p><p>There was a woman looking down at me.  She had soft white hair, a hand-knitted sweater, and three piercings in her lower lip.</p><p>That’s Santa Barbara for you.</p><p> “Are you… all right?” she asked.</p><p>I set both hands on the ground, scooted my butt out to sit on the edge of the sidewalk.</p><p>“Never better,” I said hoarsely.</p><p>She looked at the filth covering me from head to toe, the dried bloodstains on my arm and hand not quite masked by the rest of the grossness.  She clearly reserved judgment on all of that, and on what I’d been doing in a sewer barefoot.  “Are you… supposed to be down there?” she said instead.</p><p>I shook my head.  “Had a slight misunderstanding with my cousin.  Got lost.  Now I’m here.”</p><p>“Can I help?”  She sounded like she meant it, even though I could tell I’d interrupted her in the middle of carrying her groceries home.</p><p>“Actually… do you have the time?”</p><p>“Oh.”  She looked at her watch.  “It’s six-twenty.”</p><p>“AM or PM?”</p><p>She blinked at me.  “PM.”</p><p>“Uh-huh.”  I stood up, trying to look casual.  Definitely failing.  “And, uh, what’s today’s date?”</p><p>“Oh.”  She thought for a second.  “Today’s March first.”</p><p>She was going to make me come out and say it, wasn’t she.</p><p>I sighed.  “What year is it?”</p><p>Her frown of suspicion was instantaneous.  “Nineteen… ninety… nine?  Look, are you sure you’re okay?”</p><p>I turned to walk away without answering.  Sighed.  Turned back around, and leaned in close.  “Bet on UConn for the NCAA championship,” I whispered.</p><p>Then I straightened up and, with every ounce of dignity I could muster, spun around and marched away.</p><p>Hopefully she had the sense to take gambling advice from time-traveling madmen who emerged from sewers without warning.</p><p>The sketchy-looking convenience store two blocks down didn’t have a bouncer.  Good enough for me — that was where I went in.</p><p>The guy behind the counter took one look at me and yelled “Dude!  No shirt, no shoes, no service!”</p><p>He was also stuck behind a wall of bulletproof glass, so I kept walking.</p><p>He apparently decided it wasn’t worth the trouble of coming out to get rid of me, but I also figured I wasn’t likely to get a bathroom key from him.  Luck was on my side; someone emerged from the bathroom just as I was walking up to it.  The door in question had a woman’s silhouette on the front, but under the circumstances I didn’t give a damn.  I ducked inside before anyone could object, and double-locked the door behind me.</p><p>The sink water tasted metallic.  I still drank as much of it as my body could hold.</p><p>Clean-up proved to be a pretty hopeless cause, after approximately half a mile of damp paper towel didn’t do much more than make me marginally less grimy.  When someone started fumbling at the door, presumably with the key in hand, that decided it for me.</p><p>I glanced at the narrow window and the growing darkness outside.</p><p>“So much for never morphing again,” I muttered.</p><p>Then I began to focus on my inner owl.</p><p>By the time the lady who needed the bathroom had gotten in, I was well over the city.  I’d walked further than I realized while underground; I was way off in the college town near the coast, when I’d started out deep in the financial district.  The church I needed was clear in the opposite direction, because nothing was ever that easy, but I knew how to get there and what it looked like from overhead.</p><p>There was another shape, pale-feathered like a daytime hunter, drifting half a mile up and almost two miles away.  It could have been a real hawk, out in the last of the daylight in desperation to catch much-needed prey.</p><p>Could have.  But when have I ever been that lucky?</p><p>Either way, I circled and meandered like a real owl as I made my way across town.  I kept an eye on that other set of wings the entire time.</p><p>The other raptor kept an eye on me.  But we didn’t mess with each other, and maybe this time luck really was on my side.  I made it to the church's parking lot, and didn't get dive-bombed during the hairy several seconds between morphs.  That suggested I really had lost my tail.</p><p>Eva met me at the door of the church with a worried frown and a mug of oatmeal. </p><p>“You’re all right?” she asked, looking me over.</p><p>I made a show of shaking out human limbs.  “Yeah.  Took a bit of doing to get rid of them, but…”  I trailed off.  I couldn’t quite go so far as to say anything like “we’re okay” or “there’s nothing to worry about.”</p><p>Pointedly, Eva set the mug of oatmeal in my hands.</p><p>It was cold — she wouldn’t have exactly been able to predict when I’d arrive, and “an hour or two” had turned into nearly twelve — but it wasn’t bad.  It was maple-and-ginger flavor, of course.  The kind that came in instant packets.  Still available at every corner store, because the yeerks’ efforts to get this flavor banned nationwide were very much a work in progress.</p><p>As Eva watched, I took several large mouthfuls off the top.  I’m not sure how one could fake swallowing over eight ounces of oatmeal, but I still held my mouth open for her to see once I had swallowed it, like a hospital patient forced to take unpleasant medicine.</p><p>“Are you all right?” I asked Eva, between sips.  Her right wrist was swollen and purple, and her gait wasn’t quite steady.</p><p>“Oh yes, I’ll live.”  She made a small gesture with her left hand.  “An inconvenience, nothing more.”</p><p>“Okay.”</p><p>I handed the mug back to Eva.  Still watching me intently, she led the way to the church’s basement door.</p><p>“Did you talk to one of the people who works here?” I asked.</p><p>She nodded.  “Father Silva thinks you’re my nephew who has fallen in among a bad crowd, and that I am helping you to see the light.”</p><p>“Santa Evita.  Be still my heart.”</p><p>“Yes, well, you do smell awful,” Eva said.  “Should help to sell the lie.”</p><p>“Only because I spent the better part of the afternoon in a sewer,” I said, grinning.</p><p>“Must be one truly dreadful crowd you’re running with, in that case.”</p><p>“Hard drugs—” I gestured to the oatmeal.  “—poor hygiene, <em> and </em>that music with the backwards messages about Satan.  There might be no saving me.”</p><p>“We’ll go to the shelter next door and get you a shower, after.”</p><p>She didn’t have to say after <em> what</em>.  I already knew that one.</p><p>Together we went over to the basement’s tiny kitchenette area, used to prepare food for wedding and funeral receptions.  I rinsed out the mug, and pulled a second packet of oatmeal from the box Eva had open on the counter.  Naturally, she’d grabbed a whole box’s worth of the ones whose artificial maple flavoring, when combined with dried ginger and milk powder, partially imitated the chemical structure of kandrona.</p><p>Emphasis on <em> partially</em>.  For yeerks, oatmeal was to kandrona what heroin was to food for humans.  Both would stop you feeling hungry, but only one would keep you alive.</p><p>I shook the contents of the packet into a mug, and set more water to heating in the kettle.</p><p>The entire time, Eva watched me.  Measuring with her eyes the smoothness of my hands, the steadiness of my speech.  I wasn’t going to suggest a time limit to her test, because it was going to be entirely her judgment.</p><p>If I was human, myself, then the worst a serving of maple-and-ginger instant oats could do was give me a sugar rush.</p><p>If the long delay in getting back to her had been because the yeerks had gotten ahold of me…</p><p>The oatmeal would show.  It was the closest thing to an effective test we’d ever devised.</p><p>“I don’t think we’ll be able to get back to that yeerk pool entrance under Sutherland Tower,” I said.  “We could try to head back into town tomorrow, see about finding a different way back in.”</p><p>The kettle clicked off, the water fully heated up.  I grabbed down a fresh mug.  Into that one I poured water over a second maple-and-ginger serving.  Silently, I handed it over to Eva.</p><p>She actually smiled at that one.  It’s not paranoia if the threat is real, she was fond of saying.</p><p>“The Animorphs know we’re out there.”  She didn’t sugar coat.  “They know we know about them.”</p><p>Left unsaid: they were very good at finding people.  Good at hiding, spying, keeping watch.  Good at killing, too, and very willing if backed into a corner.</p><p>I took another long gulp of oatmeal, hoping it would steady me.  It didn’t, not really.</p><p>“If we just stay put,” I said, “stay hidden…”</p><p>Eva gave me a long, steady look.  If we did, they’d find us.</p><p>“Okay.”  I set my mug down, breathing out a sigh.  It’d been a long, weird day.  “Okay, so we… hop that charter to Hawaii or wherever?”</p><p>“There’s another yeerk pool in San Diego,” Eva said.  She’d clearly had the time to put some thought into it.</p><p>"And that's as close as we're going to get."</p><p>"The Pool ship is over downtown L.A."</p><p>"Yeah, no."</p><p>She smiled faintly.  Yeah, she'd probably known how thoroughly I'd refuse that one.</p><p>I grabbed the mug again, rolling it between my hands in thought.  The thought of spending the next two years stuck here, on the run from yeerks and Animorphs alike, maybe just to encounter another version of myself was...  Not something I wanted to think about.</p><p>"I hate this," I said.</p><p>"As you should," Eva murmured.</p><p>“And you want to go ahead with the plan where we maybe blow ourselves up, maybe get back to the future?”</p><p>She nodded steadily.  “The method is sound.  We’d only be collapsing an existing rip, so we should just snap back to when we belong.”</p><p>“I hate the plan where we maybe blow ourselves up.”  I was whining, and I knew it.</p><p>“We’d need to get to San Diego first.”  She gave me a wan smile.  “So there will be plenty of time to contemplate our fate before we blow ourselves up, at any rate.”</p><p>On that thought, we stood in silence and finished our maple-and-ginger oats.  Then we put the mugs in the church basement’s dishwasher, and headed back upstairs.</p><p>“Any psychosis?” Eva asked, looking at me out of the corner of her eye.  “Disorganized thought patterns?  Speech slippage?”</p><p>“No more than usual.”  I twirled a finger next to my ear, imitating the <em> crazy zombies </em>gesture I knew and hated so well.</p><p>“Tom.”  Eva was watching me with disapproval… but also with caution.</p><p>“Rubber baby buggy bumpers.”  I tilted my head back toward the sky in thought.  “He thrusts his fists against the posts and still insists he sees the ghosts.  Klaatu barada nikto.  Uh, we the people of the United States, in order to form a more, uh, unified perfection, justified establishment… to tranquilize insured domesticity…  Yeah okay, I don’t know that one.”</p><p>“Immigrate here and apply for citizenship sometime,” Eva suggested wryly.  “You’ll learn whether you like it or not.”</p><p>“Point being, am I good?”  Was I coherent, in other words.</p><p>“Yes, I suppose so.”  Eva drew in a breath.  “One.  Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.  Two—”</p><p>“Yeah, yeah, you’re good.”  I held up my hands before she could launch into any more amendments.  “Do you have the whole Constitution in there?”</p><p>“Heavens no.  I only studied what would be on the test, just like any self-respecting high schooler.”</p><p>“I’ll be sure to hit you up next time I find myself in a Civics class,” I said.</p><p>She smiled.</p><p>************</p><p>The shelter next to the church was basic, but it had what we needed: beds, showers, enough basic medical supplies to get a brace for Eva’s wrist and a few Tylenol.  We didn't have a ton of other options, even if I did feel bad about taking two beds when we weren't even technically homeless.</p><p>There were a startling number of kids among the people in line outside.  I watched one dad wrangle a toddler and two elementary schoolers, and made mental note to donate whatever I could spare to this place when I got back to my own time.</p><p>They insisted on splitting us up into two different rooms, funneling me into the men’s side and Eva into the women’s.  Neither of us liked it, neither of us wanted to be apart for the entire night, but there was no fighting it.</p><p>There were signs all over pointing out that weaponry was not allowed on the premises and would be confiscated, but no one had looked twice at the oddly shaped “flashlight” Eva was carrying.  I took it as a good sign if they couldn’t recognize a dracon beam.  Maybe we were safe from controllers.  For now, anyway.</p><p>Neither of us slept much.  And we were up early the following morning, stuff collected and ready to go.</p><p>“Do you know the way to San Diego from here?” I asked, stuffing my hands into my pockets.  They’d offered me a loaner hoodie and jeans, both of which were too short — “one size fits most” didn’t tend to include people my size — and I felt faintly ridiculous.  Shoes had been a lost cause.</p><p>“South.”  Eva smiled faintly.</p><p>“And I suppose it’s too much to hope for that you’ve got enough funds for a couple of train tickets lying around.”</p><p>She shook her head.  “Eva Alvarez is legally dead in 1999, and in no position to access a bank account.  I did have some cash in my purse.  My purse which was mere feet away when that bomb went off, and yet…”  She spread out her hands.</p><p>“Did you <em> shoplift </em> that oatmeal?”  I raised my eyebrows.</p><p>“Tell no one,” Eva intoned.</p><p>I drew a finger across my lips.</p><p>The other version of me was seventeen, and not in possession of a bank account.  Give me a few hours on the right computer and I could probably get into the Sharing's funds, but that also seemed like an unnecessary risk.</p><p>Instead I turned to look at the parking lot.  Four or five cars, and one van painted with the logo of the local convent.  The oldest was a Toyota sedan from the late 70s that looked to be just about perfect.  If you slammed the driver’s side window hard enough, it’d slide right down out of its socket.  From there, it had an ignition switch you could jam a screwdriver or other slot of metal into to get it started.  No need for an actual key.</p><p>“From petty theft oatmeal to grand theft auto it is, then.”  I didn’t sound enthusiastic about it, because I wasn’t.  But if the alternative was sticking around here until Jake murdered us both, then I’d just have to dust off my observational experience with hotwiring.</p><p>“We will do no such thing.”  Eva’s voice crackled with anger.</p><p>“We’ll leave it somewhere the cops will find it once we’re done—”</p><p>“And if the owner has no insurance?  Or an expired license?”</p><p>“Uh, it’ll still be registered in whoever’s name, right?”</p><p>“Tom, look around you.  Do these look to be the sorts of cars whose owners have an alternative to get to work every day?  Do you wish to be responsible for someone losing their job?  For someone who hasn’t passed those endless civics tests yet to get dragged out of the country?”</p><p>“Fine.  We’ll take the holy roller then.”  I made a flippant gesture at the Jesus-mobile.</p><p>“Ah yes, since nuns are always the sort to have sufficient funds for an entire new van lying around.  Those are the same nuns, might I add, who took us in last night for no other reason than a desire to help.”</p><p>“Well what do you suggest we do?”  I stopped walking, turning to look at Eva.  “<em>Walk </em> to San Diego?  We should get there in, what, a week or two?”  A harsh little laugh.</p><p>“No,” she said, “but I do have a different idea.”</p><p>She was looking past me, toward the ocean.</p><p>Toward the pier, just visible in the distance down the hill.  Too far away to see clearly, but almost certainly where there would be one or more boats tied up and unattended.</p><p>“You have got to be fucking kidding me,” I said.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0007"><h2>7. New Hampshire</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> “Here’s the deal, yeerk. You leave my mother. You do it right now. We’ll throw you into the pool. Let you live a bit longer."</p><p>"Or?"</p><p>"Or my Andalite friend here twitches."</p><p>"You won’t do it. You’re looking at your mother’s face. Her eyes. You can’t. You’re just a human, with all the usual human weaknesses."</p><p>Marco stood up, but even standing he was only a little taller than me, sitting. "You know what it says on the New Hampshire license plates?"</p><p>— <em>Visser </em>p. 157</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>So we sailed.</p><p>Which is to say Eva put the sails up and moved the lines and navigated out of the port and got the tiny motor working and steered us into the right kind of current going in the right direction.  I mostly ducked when she told me to duck, hung on when she told me to hang on, and did my best to stay out of the way.</p><p>At least I wasn’t totally useless, since I did succeed in doing most of the literal heavy lifting — the boat into the water, the equipment onto the boat, the padlock from the sail hatch.  That last had come off with the assistance of a pointy metal stick I’d wedged into position and then used to break the hinge off entirely.</p><p>Boat hook, Eva said it was called.</p><p>Turned out there were extra names for every single part of the stupid boat.</p><p>By the time we were away from the coast and out into <em> way </em>more open water than I was comfortable with in a craft this small, I was all the way up to following directions as complex as “push that lever that way” or “hold that until I tell you to drop it.”</p><p>But if there was one aspect of sailing I was mastering like a pro, it was knowing when to duck.  It only took getting whacked by a swinging post once to get <em>that</em> lesson through my head.</p><p>“People do this for fun?” I asked, peering dubiously into the depths of the Pacific.  It was the only thing to see; we’d lost sight of all land a few minutes ago.</p><p>Eva chuckled.  “Only ones with Edriss five-six-two’s sort of personality.”</p><p>“Yep, seems right.”  Bracing a hand on the mast, I craned my head around.  Ocean, ocean, sky, and some more ocean.  Blah.  “Wanna play the license plate game?”</p><p>“I don’t believe I’ve ever done that one.  With Marco it was always reading off of billboards.”  Eva gave me an evil smile.  “Or the quiet game.”</p><p>Our parents had never resorted to that one.  They'd much preferred the Stop Hitting Your Brother Or So Help Me I Will Turn This Car Around Game, if that even counted.</p><p>“Beats walking, I guess.”  I looked straight down again, unable to help myself.  “Kind of.”</p><p>“It’s faster than walking, anyway.”  Eva smiled.  “Quite possibly faster than driving, given we’d have to pass through L.A.”</p><p>“Yep.”</p><p>“Statistically speaking, it’s safer than driving too,” she added.  “Safer than walking, even.”</p><p>“I’m not scared of water,” I said too quickly.</p><p>Eva leveled a long look at me.  She didn’t point out that she’d never said I was.</p><p>“I know how to swim.  I’ve known since I was, like, six.”  I rolled my eyes.  “And...”  I gestured pointedly at the life jacket she’d made me put on.  “I don’t even have to.  And I can morph or whatever.”</p><p>Eva continued to stare steadily at me.  “Not wanting to die isn’t irrational.”</p><p>“Yeah, yeah, only one of us has ever actually been declared <em> lost at sea</em>.”  I laughed.  “It wasn’t me who drowned.”</p><p>“And I was never in any danger.”</p><p>“Nor am I.”  I sat down again.  I’d practically been fidgeting, which was some combination of <em> yay, progress </em> and <em> ugh, not keeping it together.</em></p><p>“Spaceships are safer even than this sort of craft, and it doesn’t make me fond of them.”  Eva raised her eyebrows.  “Trying to outthink discomfort is unlikely to get you anywhere.”</p><p>“I never drowned.”</p><p>“Neither did I.  Why do you keep telling me that?”</p><p>I made a face, sticking out my tongue.  Yes, I felt — and probably looked — like a bratty six-year-old.  “I was only unconscious for a few minutes.”</p><p>“Uh-huh.”</p><p>“Jake saved me.”</p><p>“Yes?”</p><p>“So it only felt like dying.”</p><p>“I’m sure it did.”</p><p>“And I was in a fucking <em> pond </em>that was, like, ten feet deep at most, and anyway...”</p><p>Eva waited.</p><p>I shrugged.</p><p>“You’re not terribly fond of water,” she suggested.</p><p>“The end.”  I gave a little bow where I sat.  And looked at the boat, and did my best not to look too much at anything else.</p><p>“Yes, that’s perfectly reasonable.”  Eva nudged one of the poles to a new angle, causing the ropes wrapped around it to pull on something that caused the boat to tilt slightly to the left.</p><p>“At least I don’t get seasick?”</p><p>She nodded.  “There is that.”</p><p>I ran a hand over my face.  The prickle of anxiety was annoying, uncomfortable, nothing more.  “Anyway, what else you want me to do?”</p><p>“You should get some sleep,” Eva said.  “We don’t know what we’ll be facing tonight.”</p><p>I glanced around dubiously.  There were no flat surfaces large enough to lie down on anywhere in this tiny ever-rocking piece of fiberglass.  I’d slept in worse places, to be sure, but none of them were in the middle of the fucking ocean.</p><p>“I’ve got it,” Eva said softly.  “And I’ll be right here.”</p><p>And that was all it took, wasn’t it.  I curled up on the bow (or possibly the aft; I kept getting those confused) and let my eyes slip closed.</p><p>**********</p><p>Eva grabbed my arm, some indeterminate amount of time later, and instantly I was wide awake.  Luckily I’m not the type to come awake flailing or yelling or whatever, even if it did take me a few seconds to focus on her face.</p><p>She glanced at me, and then toward the pole near the back of the boat.  Not the one the sails hang on.  The steering one, the tiller.</p><p>There was a seagull sitting on its flat end.</p><p>I looked up at her.</p><p>Her mouth was grim-tight, her hand clenched hard around my bicep.</p><p>I started to sit up, and she made a small gesture to keep me there.  Not sure how else to ask the next question, I focused for a second and then bared a set of fangs at her in a silent inquiry.</p><p>Eva shook her head, but then held up a hand in a <em> wait </em>gesture.  Don’t commit to the morph just yet, then, but be ready just in case.</p><p>We waited.  We watched.</p><p>The seagull stared back at us.  Probably waiting for food.</p><p>Or for backup.</p><p>I allowed my hand to slide off the side of the raised foredeck.  Casually, I ran fingers along the wood until I encountered the metal post of the boat hook.  I got a good grip on the handle, folding my fingers underneath until I was sure I could hold it.</p><p>We watched the seagull.  The seagull watched us.</p><p>Well, no.  It kept glancing up and around, and bobbing its head to the side.  Once it used its beak to itch under one wing.</p><p>Finally it tilted its head back and let out a long <em> Awk-awk-aaaaaaawwwk </em>cry.  I looked up to follow its gaze.</p><p>There were two more seagulls circling overhead.</p><p>“That does it,” I muttered.  I rolled to my feet, hefting the boat hook.</p><p>“Tom!” Eva snapped.</p><p>At my sudden motion the bird took off, flapping to hover in midair a few feet over the tiller.  It turned a tight circle… and settled back onto its perch.</p><p>I gripped the boathook like a baseball bat.</p><p>Eva put a hand on my chest.  “Don’t.”</p><p>I looked down at her.  “If it’s a real gull…”</p><p>“Then it doesn’t know what you’re planning on doing, and you’re about to kill an innocent bird.”  She glared up at me.  “If it’s <em> not </em>a real gull, then you taking a swing at it will neither kill it nor solve the much bigger problem we’d have on our hands.”</p><p>I looked back up at the gull.  It was still watching us.</p><p>“Tom,” Eva said.  “Do you really want to kill every single vaguely suspicious animal that happens to wander into the vicinity?”  She raised her eyebrows.  “Like the yeerks would do?”</p><p>“That’s a low blow,” I told her.  But I’d already lowered the boathook to my side, and she was already turning away from me.  Back toward the seagull.</p><p>Toward the real threat.</p><p>Maybe.</p><p>“So we just… wait for the boat to get annihilated by an orca?” I asked the bird.  “Is that your plan?”</p><p>"Shit," Eva hissed, looking around suddenly at the water.</p><p>I didn't look away from the gull.  If it came to that... if they tried to pull us down...</p><p>Get a dolphin morph, Cassie'd told me once, and I'd given her some brush-off answer about how much I hated the water.  Now would be an excellent time to go and punch my past self in the face for making that decision.</p><p>My hands were trembling slightly where I held the boathook.  (Yay, progress.)  My breathing was shallow, constricted.  The air tasted like water.</p><p>"Whatever the fuck you're going to do, might as well do it," I said tightly.</p><p>The bird did not answer.</p><p>Eva laughed suddenly.  “It’s a seagull,” she said, sounding fed up with herself.  “They land on boats, they get fed fish guts or trail mix or whatever by bored yachters.  It’s not acting unusually.”</p><p>“Why this boat, though?” I pointed out.  “Why us?”</p><p>The bird let out another <em>baaawk</em>, and pooped on the tiller.</p><p>“That does it.”  Eva leaned forward, clapping her hands sharply.  “Shoo!” she shouted.  “Shoo!”</p><p>The bird took off immediately.  It hovered for another second or two, screaming out protests, and then wheeled away.</p><p>Eva and I glanced at each other.  We burst into giggles, both of us sitting down when we threatened to overbalance the boat.  It was a seagull.  We were at sea, just off the California coast.  Next thing we knew, we’d be yelling at minnows and burning the whole boat down to get rid of ants.</p><p>“It’s not paranoia,” Eva said, “if they’re really after you.”</p><p>I leaned back against the mast.  “Yeah, let’s tell ourselves that.”</p><p>“All right, grab that line — no, that one.  Pull the slack out and then hold it there.  We’ve gone into irons with that dratted bird steering.”</p><p>***********</p><p>After a while I got the desalinator working by reading the directions very slowly four or five times, and got us enough fresh water to drink.  There was even enough left over to mix another two cups apiece of tepid, undercombined oatmeal for a highly unsatisfying lunch.</p><p>“Addictive, my ass,” I said, swallowing another gritty mouthful.</p><p>Eva smirked.  “On the plus side, I pity the yeerk that attempts to crawl inside either of us at this moment in time.”</p><p>“Huh.”  I finished the last of the cup. “You’ve got a point.”</p><p>Between breakfast this morning, dinner last night, and this latest batch, we were both practically pickled in the stuff.  Highly unappealing as hosts, all things considered.</p><p>Also, we were running out of oatmeal, and I was still hungry.  Eva hadn’t had either the time or the inclination to shoplift any other food.  Priorities were what they were, and all.</p><p>I folded the box back up around the last two packets, and drank some more water.  I’d live.</p><p>“You want me to take a turn at, uh…” I gestured to whatever Eva was doing.  Pulling the horizontal post at the end of the sail back and forth by tugging on the line, I could tell that much.  Its purpose was a mystery.</p><p>She shook her head.  “Stick to being ship’s cook.  I’ll keep captaining.”</p><p>“Aye-aye.”  I saluted.</p><p>Another few tugs, another several creaks of rope adjusting.</p><p>“So you only <em> look </em> tired, then,” I said.</p><p>“As captain, I reserve the right to keel-haul insubordinate cooks.”  She didn’t look down from the little flag at the top of her sail.</p><p>“And unless I can figure out how to cobble together a fishing pole and whip up some sushi, I feel like dead weight.”  I picked up the paddle.  “You want me to row?”</p><p>“That’d create drag, not speed us along.”</p><p>I leaned over the side to look at the water going by.  “Huh.”  It was hard to tell with the waves, but we were, in fact, moving along at a much faster rate than I’d expected.  “How fast are we going, anyway?”</p><p>“Twelve knots.”</p><p>“And in miles per hour, that’d be…?”</p><p>Eva glanced around at the sky, at the sea, and at her sail flags, clearly considering.  “Point-oh-oh-three standard units.  Maybe oh-oh-three-five.”</p><p>Approximately seven two-thousandths of the cruising speed of a Bug fighter moving in atmosphere, then.  Reasonable.</p><p>“Seagull stew,” I suggested, shielding my eyes to look up at where I’d last spotted white wings.  “Bet I could pull off seagull stew.  Think it’d taste like chicken?”</p><p>“No, I do not.”</p><p>“At least there’d be plenty of salt to put on it.”  I looked at the output of the desalinator.  It was kind of pretty, all those crystals glittering in the sunlight.  “You can’t eat straight salt, can you?  I may not’ve finished high school, but I’m pretty sure about that one.”</p><p>“<em>Or</em>,” Eva said pointedly, “you could just eat the last of the oatmeal.”</p><p>“What?”  I laughed nervously.  I guess I had been talking a lot about food, but I hadn’t been whining or anything.  I hoped I hadn’t, anyway.  “I’m not…”  Another laugh.  “I’m fine.”</p><p>Eva continued to stare at her little wind flag.  “If you pass out from hunger and fall overboard, I’ll have a hell of a time getting you back in the boat.”</p><p>I rolled my eyes.  “Oh, well in <em> that </em>case…”</p><p>“We’re agreed, then.”</p><p>“Eva.”  I shook the mostly-empty box.  “Let’s be realistic, here.  We’re not exactly in a position to pull over at the nearest McDonald’s when this stuff runs out, and we both need food.”</p><p>“Let’s be realistic, <em> Tom</em>.”  She was apparently still addressing the rope in her hands, but her tone was acid.  “You’re twice my size, and possibly still growing.  However many calories I need in a day, you probably require four times that amount.”</p><p>“We’ll save it,” I said firmly.  “And we’ll make another decision later.  A couple hours of being cranky won’t kill me.”</p><p>“I’ve seen you cranky.  Don’t assume you’ll survive the afternoon just yet.”</p><p>“Hey, Eva?”</p><p>“Yes?”</p><p>“You gonna let me take a turn moving that rope around, or you gonna listen to me complain about how much your wrist is obviously hurting you until you do go through with that threat?”</p><p>“You are a terrible child.  Incorrigible.”</p><p>“Learned it from the best, Visser Mom.”</p><p>“Place your hands between mine, and do exactly what I say.”</p><p>“Yes, ma’am.”</p><p>I glanced again at the water, even as I allowed the rope to slide through my hands.  I couldn't help it.</p><p>"The worst they can do is kill us," Eva murmured.</p><p>I knew what she meant, of course: there were no yeerks out here.  Not yet, anyway, not for years.  And the Animorphs didn't exactly infest people.</p><p>Didn't kill either, if they could help it.</p><p>A shadow sluiced under the water, maybe ten feet down from our boat.  Tuna, or sailfish, or one of those other giant fuckers that belonged in a sandwich rather than out swimming around being all shady about it.  Tuna, or sailfish... or something else entirely.  Only pretending, for a time, in shark or dolphin skin.</p><p>"You'll have to give it more slack," Eva said, and I forced my gaze away.</p>
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<a name="section0008"><h2>8. A City</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>We were fools. This wasn't some little group of alien bad guys we were dealing with. To build this underground city, these guys had power we couldn't even imagine.</p><p>That's almost what it was. A city. There were buildings and sheds all around the rim of the cavern. And we could see yellow Caterpillar earthmovers and cranes at work on the far side of the cavern. They seemed weirdly normal in this incredible place.</p><p>And there were creatures everywhere. Taxxons, hork-bajir, and other things I couldn't even begin to guess at.</p><p>But mostly, there were humans.</p><p>—<em>The Invasion</em> p. 168</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>The afternoon passed steadily.  Twice more I thought I saw dark shapes cutting through the water.  But the fact that our boat didn’t go the way of the <em> Pequod </em>meant it was probably just my imagination.</p><p>Or real fish.  Not <em>every </em>animal on the planet was secretly a morpher, after all.</p><p>“How are you doing?” I asked Eva.</p><p>She leveled an unamused look at me.  She looked... like I’d thrown her out of a fourth-story window yesterday, and not exactly given her the time to stop by a hospital afterward.</p><p>“So far you’re keeping us on track,” she said.</p><p>“Not the boat.”  I flapped a hand.  “I just mean…”  I pointed at the rope in her hand.  “You could take a nap as well.  I think I can keep us pointing the right way for a few hours.”</p><p>She smirked.  “And I think that your grasp of the U.S. Constitution exceeds your grasp of sailing.”</p><p>"Words hurt, Visser Mom."</p><p>"Poor darling."</p><p>"Seriously, you're...?"</p><p>“Never better,” Eva said sharply.</p><p>She was a tough one, there was no denying that, but her right wrist was swollen and I could see scrapes along her face and shoulder.  No broken bones, she’d assured me, and I believed her, but I wouldn’t be surprised if she’d strained every joint in her body.</p><p>“Okay,” I said.  “Yeah, okay.”</p><p>We sang to pass the time, old pop hits and even a few hymns that Eva taught me.  We rehashed theories about who we’d angered enough to warrant a mail bomb.  We swapped notes on strangest Matter Over Mind clients we’d ever encountered.</p><p>We didn't eat any more oatmeal.  Or stop at a Burger King, for that matter.</p><p>“...so I’m totally zoned out, like to the point where I would’ve missed my stop if I hadn’t been interrupted.”  I laughed at myself.  “And this lady says to me, ‘Can my mom have your seat?’  Which is when I realize the entire bus is standing-room full, and there’s this seventy-something lady and her, like, hundred-year-old mom looking at where I’m taking up one of the seats...”</p><p>“Oh, Tom.”  Eva shook her head, half in amusement and half in exasperation.</p><p>“And I’m like, still in reboot mode.  I’m scrambling to get up, mumbling apologies, but I am full-on zombie the whole time.”</p><p>“Did you at least try to explain?”</p><p>“What, in between almost falling on my ass and forgetting how many syllables there are in the word ‘sorry’?”</p><p>Eva laughed, head thrown back.  She’d been there herself, of course, which was why I was telling her all this.</p><p>“Anyway, the lady actually looks guilty for having asked by the time I’m done getting upright while not whacking my head on the ceiling.”  But I was also young and strong and (nowadays) had all of my original knees.  So I’d been mortified to be taking up a seat while septuagenarians had to stand around.</p><p>“And they say chivalry is dead,” Eva intoned.</p><p>“I wasn’t doing it because she was a lady, I was doing it because she had old-lady hips!”  I sighed, tilting my head back.  “That came out wrong.  You know what I mean.”</p><p>“Yes I do.  Carry on.”</p><p>“Anyway, after I’m up, this guy nudges me, and he says ‘We can help people like you, if you’d like.’”  I imitated his tone, which had been super-slow and super-loud.  Condescending prick.</p><p>“Scientologist?”</p><p>“I wish.”</p><p>“Oh no.”</p><p>“Oh yeah.  Turns out, he’s a fucking Symbiote.”</p><p>Eva made a noise like she was considering spitting into the water, but just barely had too much dignity to do so.  “Perish the thought.”</p><p>“Perish his ass, too.”</p><p>Symbiotes were... not technically a terrorist organization, not the way the Neo-Humanists were.  They didn’t hate hork-bajir or want them dead; they just didn’t view the hork-bajir as people.  They didn’t view a lot of people as people.  Taxxons.  Zombies of all species.  Anyone who disagreed with them.</p><p>Almost all of the Symbiotes were deluded pseudo-hippies who thought the yeerks had come with a message of peace from a superior civilization, and most held the view that controllers were better off being controlled.  In fact, there were lots of people they thought were better off under yeerk control.  Make a list of anyone the Eugenicists had ever tried to annihilate — disabled, poor, underachieving, “inferior” — and the Symbiotes had an argument for why they should get a yeerk up the brain.</p><p>“Did he know?” Eva asked.</p><p>“You mean, did he figure out I was a zom—"</p><p>“Tom.”</p><p>“—ex-host?”</p><p>“Precisely.”</p><p>I tilted a hand to indicate uncertainty.  “I don’t think so.  I think it was just obvious that I had shit balance and a questionable grasp of language when caught off-guard.”</p><p>Eva hummed agreement.</p><p>“So I say to him, ‘Mr. Jones,’ — that’s his name, he introduced himself somewhere in there — I say, ‘Mr. Jones, when’s the last time you had a sexual dream about someone other than your current partner?’”</p><p>“You didn’t.”  Eva leaned across the deck to smack me in the side.  “You couldn’t have asked for his bank account number instead?  Or the most embarrassing moment of his childhood?”</p><p>“It, uh, didn’t occur to me?”</p><p>“I suppose you still got your point across.”  She sniffed.</p><p>Because she knew what I’d actually been saying.  “Yeah, anyway, he’s obviously appalled.  Tells me it’s none of my fucking business and he has no idea why I’d ever ask such a personal question...”</p><p>“At which point you tell him that he is, in essence, asking you to disclose that information to a yeerk.  That he is saying that you, and every person like you, has no right to any privacy even in the deepest parts of your own mind,” Eva said, warm with amusement.  “That he is a small-minded and selfish little human who only feels entitled to hand out such opinions precisely because they are of no effect to him, and are themselves proof that he has no idea what he’s talking about.”</p><p>“My version had more profanity in it.”</p><p>“Of course it did.”</p><p>“So by this time half people on the bus are watching us.  Nothing else to do, I guess.  And there’s dead silence once I’m done.”</p><p>“Doubtless because everyone’s ears are bleeding from your language.”  Eva was smiling as she said it, and moving less stiffly.  Which was the whole reason I’d launched into this story.</p><p>“Yeah.”  I leaned close in a <em> get-this </em>gesture.  “And then... the whole bus stops.  Like, not at a stop or anything.  The doors pop open right there, and the driver looks over her shoulder and says, ‘You gonna harass other passengers, you can get off.’”</p><p>“Tom.”</p><p>“I know, I know.  So I start to head for the front, figuring I can always just fly home...”</p><p>“You really should’ve used the bank account question.”</p><p>“Yeah, yeah, hindsight twenty-twenty.  But I’m halfway to the door at the front of the bus when I realize, <em>s</em><em>he’s not talking to me.</em>”</p><p>Eva’s brows drew together.  “Then...?”</p><p>“Yep.  She’s jerking her thumb at the Symbiote guy.  Just staring him down, not blinking.”</p><p>Kind of like zombies tended not to blink.  I didn’t know for sure, but I had a hunch.</p><p>“You’re very lucky, you know that?” Eva asked, laughing.  “Troublemaker.”</p><p>“Oh, you don’t have to tell me.”  I leaned back, both arms open.  “I have no defense.”</p><p>And I’d been the one steering for the better part of an hour without her demanding to take back over.  Two missions accomplished, really.</p><p>“You think it was a Symbiote who sent the bomb, don’t you,” Eva said.</p><p>I looked out at the water.  Then back up at the sail; there was nothing worth contemplating out there.  “Yeah.  Tell you why, too.  That package… it almost certainly arrived <em> before </em> we left for the protest.  And we know it had to have been sent beforehand, whether or not it got there when the person intended.”</p><p>“So they weren’t counter-protesting.”  Eva coiled rope slowly into a roll as she spoke.  “They were trying to stop us from ever getting to D.C.  Yes, that fits.”</p><p>“Sucks to be them,” I said, inordinately cheerful.  “Suck on <em> that</em>.”</p><p>Eva chuckled.  “Ten thousand people.”</p><p>“Ten thousand.”</p><p>We smiled at each other, entirely too smug for our own good, for a solid couple of seconds.</p><p>The D.C. protest had been incredibly simple in its goal: just to show people who we were.  Just… get a metric fuckton of zombies in one place at one time, and get news coverage of us walking around.  Not shuffling or drooling — although there’d been a little of that, we did live up to our nickname — but more importantly not helping yeerks or kidnapping kids.  Just walking and sitting and talking to each other out there in the sunlight.  Buying ice cream and taking photos in front of the Lincoln Memorial and wearing matching t-shirts that fearlessly proclaimed we were survivors of the parasites.</p><p>It’d proved two points.</p><p>The first was that we were not the enemy.  We had the enemy’s faces, we spoke with the enemy’s voices, we used the same names and addresses as the people who had so nearly enslaved the planet… But <em> we </em>were not the ones responsible for those nightmares.  We were just ordinary humans, visiting Smithsonians and feeding ducks in the reflecting pool.</p><p>The second was that there were too many of us to sweep under the rug, and that some of us were too powerful to ignore.  So the people in charge had best start listening.</p><p>The whole thing had been my baby.  From the fundraising to the permits to the advertisements.  From the phone calls to zombie senators and zombie CEOs, to the four-thousand-plus plane tickets and hotel rooms whose cost I’d deferred.</p><p>Four thousand.  That was how many people Matter Over Mind had helped attend.  We’d called just about every zombie on the planet, to be sure — close to two hundred thousand by my best guess — but we’d been expecting maybe an extra five hundred we hadn't invited.  Nothing had prepared us for the independent protestors to <em> outnumber </em> the ones we’d recruited.</p><p>“When’s the last time you got a full night of sleep, anyway?” Eva asked.</p><p>“Uuuugggh, don’t remind me.”  I held up one finger.  “That cot from last night was… not bad, really, but there were forty other dudes in that room so <em> that </em>was not relaxing.”  Another finger.  “No person my height has ever slept on an airplane, ever, in the whole of human history.”  Another finger.  “I only lost, what, six or seven hours the night before the protest?”  Another finger.  “Past-me was a dumbass who was nervous the night before the flight out and spent half the night shooting hoops instead of sleeping.  So…”</p><p>I blew out a raspberry.</p><p>Eva stuck out her tongue in sympathy.</p><p>“Gotta admit, though, that having me on logistics and you on ‘stand there and look pretty’ works <em> much </em>better than when we tried it the other way around.”</p><p>Eva winced at the memory.</p><p>The rumors I was secretly a voluntary had mostly died down, a year later.  Mostly.</p><p>“I wouldn’t have left you solely responsible for putting out fires if I’d known just how many fires there would be,” she murmured.  “Someone really should pay you overtime.  Pay you period.  The kind of work you've put in, and the value add..."</p><p>I laughed like she’d been joking.  Mostly because I was not at all comfortable with how her tone had gotten a little too serious, there.</p><p>I hadn’t really done anything impressive for the protest, hadn’t even made it to the Washington Mall myself.  Instead I’d spent the entire day holed up in our hotel room, phone set to speaker mode so that I could make calls and clack away at my computer at the same time.  First it had been the lost couple from Peoria who needed information on how to meet up with the rest of the protest.  Then it’d been the police officer who tried to get us shut down and had to be overridden with an avalanche of permits.  Then the entire busload of zombies from a church in Virginia who’d ended up stranded outside of town and needed me to arrange a coach to ferry them the rest of the way.  Then the donation calls.  Then the offers of support from senators.  Then the requests to get time on Eva’s calendar in the future for interviews or sponsorships.  Then, then, then.</p><p>“I really <em>should</em> get paid for having to talk to Jeremy Jason McCole.”  I made an elaborate face.</p><p>“That was a particularly inspired move, I have to say.”</p><p>Eva’d been the front for our operation, but McCole — along with a handful of B-list celebrities like Barbara Streisand and William Roger Tennant and Kiko DeLowe — had been what brought the press.  And the busloads of churchgoers.  And the sponsorships from UniBank and Format Cee’s Colon.</p><p>“Blame Jordan.”  I waved a hand.</p><p>“Oh?”</p><p>I laughed.  “I did it for her, okay?”</p><p>“That <em>is</em> saintly behavior.”</p><p>“It was her birthday coming up, I floated it.  She was all ‘I am <em> so </em> over JJM and didn’t even like him in the first place.'  For about thirty seconds.  And then I was like ‘okay, but I do <em> happen </em> to be on first-name terms with the guy and I’m going to lunch with him next week, so you can come along or not.’  And what do you know, she came along.  <em> And </em> talked him into doing the protest.”</p><p>The point of including him was, as Bonnie had put it, to show the world that we weren’t all like Spacey Gervais.</p><p>(Eva usually told us not to call Spacey that.  Bonnie usually countered the guy showed up to Matter Over Mind meetings, wrote “Spacey” on his name tag, and she was just respecting his wishes.  At which point I usually chimed in to offer that I’d also prefer "Spacey", if my real first name was Hildebrand.  Then Eva would shake her head and change the subject, nothing resolved.)</p><p>Jeremy Jason McCole was, for all his faults, young and hip and still in possession of most of his faculties.  He gave our cause good press just by existing.</p><p>And I was willing to forgive him for being stupid enough to be a voluntary.  And Eva was not.</p><p>“You think we’re going to see some movement?” I asked, before we could get into the old argument.</p><p>“On public opinion, yes.  On legal matters?”  She sighed.</p><p>“We’re never gonna be prisoners of war, are we.”</p><p>“Nope.”</p><p>“Let me just say, Mrs. Alvarez.”  I pressed a hand over my heart.  “No matter what the government might think, you’ll always be a POW to me.”</p><p>Eva flicked seawater at my face.  Honestly, I deserved it.</p><p>************</p><p>Eva took the tiller back — and put me to work getting the sails into position — as she moved us toward the shore.  I had no hope of reading the charts and maps she’d been using, but it turned out she knew her shit because we pulled into a beach on one of the Channel Islands just as the sun began to stain the Pacific.  There was no tie-up, but Eva grounded it and I dragged the boat the last several feet onto the sand.</p><p>Because nothing is ever that easy, there was a fence around the campground she’d found just off the beach.  The guardhouse was closed for the day, not that we had the cash or the permits necessary to enter properly.</p><p>The fence was chain-link and only about seven feet high, but there was barbed wire at the top as a deterrent.</p><p>“Heaven forbid any of the homeless people who could actually benefit from sleeping here get in,” Eva grumbled, looking at it.  “No, we must reserve this area strictly for wealthy tourists who wish to sleep outside for fun.”</p><p>I sighed, regarding those rows of barbed wire.  “Can I borrow your sweater?”</p><p>She saw the direction of my gaze, of course.  “Will it be coming back to me in the same condition?”</p><p>“Nope.”</p><p>“So much for that overtime.”  She was already shrugging out of it and handing it over.</p><p>I laughed easily this time, glad to hear her back to joking about paying me instead of threatening to do it for real.</p><p>Eva handed over her sweater, and I tossed it over a section of the barbed wire.  I grabbed the top of the fence through the sheltering layers of cashmere and pulled myself up to balance at the top.  It was a little awkward to stand like that, straddling the fence with one foot hooked through the chain links on either side.  But the fence wasn’t nearly the deterrent for someone my size that it was for, say, Eva.</p><p>Sitting gingerly on the supportive surface of her sweater — I did <em> not </em> want to get stabbed by that barbed wire anywhere delicate — I reached down and grabbed both of her forearms.  She had to scramble to gain purchase in the chain links with the toes of her flats, but she made it up and over.  Briefly I held her in my arms, then I lowered her to the other side.</p><p>She was puffing for air by the time I jumped down next to her.  I yanked her sweater loose as gently as I was able, but it tore and left several fibers behind anyway.</p><p>“That’s it, I’m cancelling your next benefits check entirely,” she huffed as she pulled it back on.</p><p>I chuckled.</p><p>We went over the plan as we huddled in one of the cabins.  It was a rental, and there was a lock on the door, but I’d slipped under the door frame in roach morph and solved that one too.</p><p>“San Diego's yeerk pool has a repair facility for Bug fighters,” Eva explained.  “We walk in, act like we belong.  If I’m recognized, we roll with it and treat it as a surprise inspection.  If I’m not, all the easier for us.”</p><p>“I set off the alarm, and you give the order to clear out?” I said.</p><p>She nodded.  “If anyone refuses to leave...”</p><p>“You try persuading them, and then I morph and <em> persuade </em> a little harder if necessary?”</p><p>“Yes.”</p><p>We wouldn’t be killing any hosts, under any circumstances.  That much went without saying.</p><p>“Get some sleep,” Eva said.  “We’ll be needing it.”</p><p>I peered out the window at the night beyond.  Bats fluttered in the open area of the campground, scooping up the mosquitoes attracted by the lights.  A low shape slunk along the edge of the clearing, raccoon or possum or something else entirely.  There could be an entire herd of rhinoceroses waiting just beyond the tree line, and we wouldn’t necessarily be able to tell.</p><p>“Yeah,” I muttered.  “Gonna sleep like a fucking baby.”</p>
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<a name="section0009"><h2>9. Faces and Eyes</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“You think I don’t know what Visser One is like?" [Marco] said hotly.</p><p>"I know you do," Erek said.  "But humans are easily tricked by outer appearances.  You judge people by their faces and eyes.”</p><p>—<em> The Escape </em> p. 19</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>By the following morning, I was definitely getting hangry.  But I didn’t have the skills necessary to turn any of the sea urchins from the tidal pools into a meal, and after debating for a while neither Eva nor I could remember if it was urchins or puffer fish that were supposed to be toxic.</p><p>This is what two and a half years of half-assing at Boy Scouts will get you, I guess.  Anyway, I ate my last cup of cold oatmeal and kept my complaining to myself.</p><p>Eva let me put up one of the sails, this time.  And she didn’t even make any snarky comments when she immediately had to take it down and redo whatever it was I’d fucked up in the process.  She’s nice like that.</p><p>Another half a day on the water, and we pulled up to dock at a public pier.  Most of the other tie-ups were occupied by yachts, but Eva insisted that that was an advantage — the more this boat stood out, the faster someone would be able to get it back to its owner.</p><p>“What happened to it being perfectly okay to take a craft that no one needs?” I asked.</p><p>We were midway through the four-mile walk to the yeerk pool entrance, and I’d already invented three separate excuses to stop and rest for a minute.  I knew Eva would never forgive me if I even thought about offering to carry her, so frequent bathroom and sightseeing breaks were my next best choice for keeping her from pushing herself too hard.</p><p>“I said no such thing,” Eva told me.  “I chose it <em> because </em> we have a far better guarantee that it will return to its owner now that we’re done with it.”</p><p>“You’re really cramping my ability to start a life of crime, you know that?”  I smiled and nodded a little too hard at a guy who gave Eva a second look as he went past.  He took the hint to keep going.</p><p>Hopefully a garden-variety creep.  Hopefully not a controller.</p><p>Eva sighed loudly.  “Speaking of which, I may have had another slip of conscience at that last convenience store while you were using the facilities.”</p><p>“‘Slip of conscience’ almost certainly sounds worse than whatever it was you —”  I gasped at the box of Twinkies she’d just produced from inside her sweater.  “Holy <em> crap</em>, I love you.”</p><p>“I’d say our life of crime is heating up, wouldn’t you?”  She smirked up at me, even as I pulled the box away and ripped it open.</p><p>I was too busy trying to fit an entire snack cake into my mouth at once to answer.</p><p>**************</p><p>“You ready?” Eva asked me.</p><p>We were just outside the front door of the San Diego YMCA.  The YMCA located just over the entrance to the San Diego yeerk pool.</p><p>Yipee.</p><p>“Uh…”  I shucked off the loaner sweatshirt, draped it over the nearest railing.  Hopefully someone who actually fit into it properly would find and use it.</p><p>The goal was to look like one of Visser One’s pet thugs, and the skintight athletic shirt I wore underneath was more convincing than a Diamondbacks hoodie in the wrong size.  The morphing top had been custom-made for Visser Seventeen, gunmetal grey with dark red stripes down each sleeve to indicate (Ha!) loyalty to Visser Three.  Even if it lacked the mustard-yellow that Visser One favored, it had the understated colors that human-controllers tended to wear when away from the public eye.</p><p>"Better," Eva said.</p><p>“Can I…?”</p><p>Eva inclined her head.  “Do what you must.”</p><p><em> What I must </em> wasn’t much, really.  I finger-combed her short curls and used the loose thread she handed me to pull them into a twist at the back of her head.  Then I tucked both sleeves into her sweater and draped it around her shoulders, so that it looked more like a shawl than a cardigan.  It hid the frayed edges, anyway, and looked a little closer to the formal way Edriss tended to put on Eva's body.</p><p>I was about to wish for Rachel to be here to help in my efforts, and then remembered that Rachel being here right now would result in my untimely demise.  At least I was shallower than Jake, who somehow succeeded in not caring about clothes <em> at all</em>.  I’d have to do.</p><p>After a second, I nudged a loose curl free from her updo.  Then reconsidered, and put it back.</p><p>“Do you actually have any other ideas, or are you stalling?” Eva asked after a second.</p><p>“Stalling,” I replied cheerfully.</p><p>She rolled her eyes.  “Let’s go, then.”</p><p>Just like getting out of the Sutherland Tower, this was going to be all about walking fast and acting like we belonged.  Only Sutherland Tower’d been almost empty, whereas this place would be bustling.  And we’d still managed to fuck up our exit from the tower pretty badly.</p><p>So I shoved the door open, and Eva walked in like she owned the place.</p><p>“Good afternoon, and welcome!”  The guy behind the counter stuttered, just a little, at the sight of Eva.  Okay, then.  “Do you have a YMCA membership, or are you interested in joining?”</p><p>“Actually,” Eva said, “we’re here on behalf of the Village People.”</p><p>That was, no shit, the yeerk pool password.  Presumably because you had to be a fucking alien to say shit like that — or “Sharing is caring,” for that matter — with a straight face.</p><p>“Right this way, ma’am.”  The guy made a sweeping gesture to his right, which helped cover the motion of him hitting a hidden switch under the desk with his left hand.  Unlocking the correct door.  “Second door down that hall.”</p><p>Eva nodded curtly.</p><p>In the mirrors along the far wall, I watched as the controller behind the desk dove for a phone, raising it to his ear and speaking fast and low into the receiver.</p><p>“They know we’re coming,” I muttered.</p><p>Eva sighed.  “Of course they do.”</p><p>She twisted the knob on the door, stepping through into a short hallway.  There were four more doors awaiting us beyond, all helpfully labeled with signs.  <em> Spa and Whirlpool </em> was the one we walked by most quickly, and I felt a surge of gratitude we wouldn’t be going there.  <em> Offices </em> was probably exactly what it sounded like, only the offices wouldn’t be for any YMCA administrators.  <em> Restroom </em>was… code for something, presumably, but I couldn’t figure it out.  Heck, maybe it really was just a private bathroom.  Even yeerk-controlled humans gotta shit sometimes.</p><p><em> Maintenance </em> was the door we needed.  Eva twisted the knob, and it swung inward.</p><p>“You ready?” she said again.</p><p>I knew what she meant.  We were about to be met by a crowd.  “Yes, ma’am.”</p><p>Eva strode into the room, head high, eyes narrowed.</p><p>The space beyond was enormous, but you almost didn't notice that at first.  There was a huge flurry of motion; it was impossible to tell whether there were 20 or 80 controllers in the room beyond because so many of them were rushing to greet Eva while so many others rushed away to hide.</p><p>“This is a surprise inspection!” Eva declared loudly, not breaking stride even as the crowd swirled around her.  “Anyone who does not comply will be answering to me, <em> do I make myself clear? </em>"</p><p>This last was half-shouted into the face of a controller who’d made the mistake of getting too close to her.</p><p>“Yes, Visser!” he squeaked.</p><p>“Well?” Eva demanded.</p><p>“Vi… Visser?”</p><p>“How do you explain the <em> state </em> of this place?”  She made an emphatic gesture to her left, not bothering to look and see what she was pointing at.</p><p>“I, that is, we’ve had a difficult month…”</p><p>“Is that an <em> excuse</em>?”</p><p>“No, no, ma’am…”</p><p>“Fix it!  NOW!”</p><p>He ran off.  Eva kept moving.  I kept trailing in her wake.  Arms crossed.  Expression somewhere between <em> stern </em> and <em>cromagnon</em>.</p><p>She was magnificent.  You could overlook her unvisserlike hair and torn sweater if you didn’t get a good look at her in the first place, too busy running to obey her orders at top speed under fear for your life.</p><p>Soon the entire massive warehouse area was bustling with controllers moving every which-way, either scrambling to neaten the facility in time for the inspection or just flat-out running for it.</p><p>“Visser, we— We do apologize for the lack of readiness, but we were not given advance notice—”  The human-controller was jogging to keep up with the relentless speed of Eva’s stride, sweat dampening his hairline.</p><p>“Typical of Esplin nine-four-six-six’s incompetence,” Eva said loudly.  “Temrash one-fourteen?”</p><p>It took me a second to realize that I was being addressed — she'd used the wrong yeerk name, not that I was about to point it out.  “Uh, yes Visser?”</p><p>“Check on the security systems.  You know what to do.”  She snapped a dismissive gesture my way, not bothering to turn and look.</p><p>“Yes, Visser.”  I turned and headed fast for the security tower, trying to look frightened.</p><p>It wasn’t hard.  I could see now that there had to be close to a hundred controllers milling around in here, many of them yeerks with hork-bajir or taxxon hosts that could shred my puny human body before I could even think about trying to morph.  And if anyone suspected that Eva and I were imposters, that we weren’t actually controllers ourselves...</p><p>The fate waiting for us would be a hell of a lot worse than mere shredding.</p><p>“Surprise inspection, on orders from Visser One,” I snapped at the doorway of the security booth.</p><p>“Ssshurreee-sser-One?” a taxxon-controller asked.</p><p>“Yes.”  I held the door open.  “You’ll all need to get out.  That includes you...?”</p><p>“Ressssss-arrr-sssss-four-sssssssgen.”  Which was either the yeerk’s name or an entirely different statement.  Taxxons were not well-adapted for human languages, and their ability to use Galard wasn’t much better.</p><p>“I’ll be noting that.”  I looked down my nose at the taxxon-controller, and the two human-controllers standing behind him.</p><p>They left.  Amazing, how far you can get by pretending you know what you’re doing.</p><p>Looking out through the control booth’s window, I watched Eva’s progress across the enormous cavern-like room.  Eva herself was too far away to make out clearly, lost amidst the rows of parked Bug fighters, but she had to be at the eye of the storm of controllers running every which-way across the floor.</p><p>“Okay.”  I thumbed on the control panel, pressing a palm against the computer’s scanner.  “Okay, okay, okay, we're okay.  We've made it this far.  We're okay.”</p><p>“Good morning, Essa four-one-two, and may the kandrona shine and enrich you, as it enriches all the glory of the beneficent and enlightened Yeerk Empire,” the computer chirruped.  Oh great, it was one of <em> those </em>terminals.</p><p>“Computer, I need to report a toxic fuel leak,” I said aloud.</p><p>“I’m terribly sorry to hear that, Essa four-one-two.  Where did this fuel leak occur?”</p><p>“The main line.  It has spread to most of the building by now.”</p><p>“That’s a shame.  I bet you must feel frustrated, don’t you?”</p><p>“Ugh,” I muttered.  This half-assed pre-canned empathy was the worst part of dealing with this stupid mid-1999 generation of terminals, except of course for —</p><p>“Our great and wise leader, Visser Three, hero of Sleegab Five, scourge of the all andalites, conqueror of Earth, should probably learn of this.”</p><p>—the ass-kissing.</p><p>“Given his infinite might and strategic brilliance,  I will go ahead and notify Visser Three now.”</p><p>“Computer, cancel that,” I said quickly.  “Just activate the alarms for the fuel leak.  We have to evacuate the whole building immediately.”</p><p>“I’m deeply sorry to hear that, Essa four-one-two.  It sounds like a tough situation.”</p><p>“Yeah, so evacuate!”</p><p>“I will need to confirm, because my sensors are not detecting a leak —”</p><p>“Your sensors are faulty, computer.  Please just activate all alarms, and evacuate the building immediately.”</p><p>“Confirmed, Essa four-one-two.  Activating alarms now.  Have a nice day, and may the kandrona shine and enrich you!”</p><p>“Thanks, computer.”  Great, now I was catching the fake-polite shit.</p><p>“You’re very welcome, Essa four-one-two.  If there’s any other way I can help, please do let me know.”</p><p>The lights outside went a deep red, then blinked to green, then back to red.  The deep but rising <em> Weeeeee-OOOOOOOO </em> of the artificial klaxon noise echoed through the building.  Over it, a mechanical voice recited with maniacal cheer: “Please evacuate or perish.  Have a nice day!  Please evacuate or perish.  Have...”</p><p>I pumped a fist in the air.</p><p>Running back to the door, I yanked it shut behind me.  There was a wrench on the nearest console, so I grabbed that and whacked the outer handle for all I was worth until it crumpled and came off.  Someone would eventually be able to get in there and give the computer the override codes, but it would take a while.</p><p>“Please evacuate or perish.  Have a nice day!  Please evacuate...”</p><p>I ran back down to the main floor.  Eva was barking orders at the crowd of controllers heading for the exit, pointing and demanding they leave any time someone looked at her.  Again, it was only a matter of time before they figured out that “Visser One” hadn’t followed them outside and sent someone back in for her, but we’d bought ourselves some time.</p><p>“You have what we need?” I yelled over the siren.</p><p>She nodded.  “Fourth from the end in that corner—”  She pointed.  “And this one.”  She gestured to the Bug fighter directly to our left.  “One’s got broken stabilizers but will travel across level ground, and the other is being updated for life support.  Both have functioning weapons systems.  Meet me in the area just off the launch hall — maps say it’s an empty storage room.”</p><p>“Got it.”  I took off at a run for the far corner of the room.  It was nearly a quarter mile away, the space so cavernous that I soon lost sight of Eva amidst the parked spaceships.</p><p>The last of the controllers were leaving the building as I went.  I passed a few humans running in the other direction, and once a whole group of hork-bajir moving in formation.  No one did more than glance at me.  Either I was a stranger to them, or they knew my face and thus didn’t question my presence.</p><p>I skidded to a stop at the far back corner.  Had to backtrack to find the fourth ship on the end.</p><p>“One,” I muttered, turning back, “two... three...”</p><p>There it was, the one I needed.  I threw the switch on the outer hull to lower the ramp to the ground.  Before it was even halfway open, I’d ducked inside.</p><p>The interior was cool and cramped, the dim space tall enough for me to move around freely — it was designed to accommodate hork-bajir-controllers — but lacking the comforts of a human or andalite craft.  Yeerks really didn’t get concepts like <em> aesthetics </em> or even <em> chairs</em>, which I guess made sense for a bunch of blind aquatic parasites.</p><p>We were short on time, but I still punched in the code for a quick diagnostic report.  If the ship was even more broken than its logs estimated, I didn’t want to blow myself up by accident.</p><p>Instead, Eva and I were planning to blow ourselves up on purpose…</p><p>“Stop it,” I told myself out loud.  And then, “computer, life-form scan?”</p><p>“Confirmed.”</p><p>Thank fuck for this stripped-down interface.</p><p>The scan popped up with exactly the news I wanted to see: only one heat signature in the area, a handful of simple lifeforms (presumably bugs) scattered over the floor, and no hork-bajir or taxxons left in the room.</p><p>“Diagnostics complete.  Warning: do not attempt to operate this craft in atmosphere.”</p><p>“Thanks,” I said automatically, skimming the readout.</p><p>The fighter was, indeed, in crap condition.  Forward thrusters offline, nav system unable to compensate, stabilizers not responding to the scan at all.  None of which would stop me from taxiing it over to where Eva had specified.  And the weapons seemed to be working just fine.</p><p>Turning the front hatches transparent, I guided the craft out of its spot and across the open aisle by sight and feel alone rather than relying on the broken nav system.  The exit for the launch tunnel wasn’t hard to find — it was the opening large enough to admit three Bug fighters side-by-side, set into the far wall.</p><p>Nosing the craft down the launch chute, I spun it into the opening that must’ve been what Eva described.  No helpful sign on the door marked it as storage, but the entire Bug fighter already crammed into the back room was a good hint that that’s what she’d meant.</p><p>It was private enough that — especially in the middle of an emergency evacuation — no one was going to spot us here.</p><p>Plus, the alarm was barely audible from here.  A bonus in and of itself.</p><p>Only problem?  The room wasn’t exactly empty the way the plans had claimed.</p><p>I managed to get the Bug fighter turned around, nose to nose with the one Eva’d left running.</p><p>I only knocked over four or five towers of boxed oatmeal in the process.</p><p>Considering there had to be over a thousand packets of maple-and-ginger instant oats tumbled into this space, it wasn’t bad.  We could just about fit two Bug fighters with a minuscule amount of space left over.  It'd do.</p><p>Leaving the engine running, I slid the hatch back open.  I could feel myself grinning as I swung through the door.  This plan was completely, irrevocably <em> nuts</em>, but we were about to pull it off.</p><p>One way or another, we were going to blow this popsicle stand.</p><p>“You know what,” I said, running down the ramp, “I’m starting to think the Yeerk Empire had a <em> sliiight </em>communication problem, if you know what I…”</p><p>I stopped.</p><p>Eva wasn’t looking at me.  Nor was she paying attention to her own Bug fighter.</p><p>Instead she stared, white-faced and silent, directly away from the open hatch.</p><p>“Hi Mom,” Marco said, just as Ax stepped out next to him.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0010"><h2>10. Our Little Circus</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>&lt;We gave them a pretty good fight, didn't we?&gt; I said. &lt;Our little circus? We did some damage to them.&gt;</p><p>&lt;Yes, we did,&gt; Rachel agreed.</p><p>&lt;Do...&gt; Ax hesitated. Then, &lt;Do humans fear death?&gt;</p><p>&lt;Yes. We're not crazy about death,&gt; I answered. &lt;How about Andalites?&gt;</p><p>&lt;We're also not crazy about it.&gt;</p><p>—<em>The Predator</em> p. 138</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Eva shoved me back and pulled out the dracon beam all in one motion.  The arm she’d thrown across my chest pressed me away from the Animorphs, against the wall of the Bug fighter.  She leveled the weapon at Ax, then Marco, thumbing off the safety without looking down.</p><p>I shrank against the cool metal, heart pounding.</p><p>“If you come any closer,” Eva growled, swinging the weapon back toward Ax, “so help me, I <em> will </em> shoot you somewhere nonlethal.”  Back toward Marco.  “On a morpher, that leaves me plenty of options.”</p><p>“Eva,” I whispered.</p><p>She was sliding sideways, shoving me along with her shoulder as she went.  Moving us both toward the door of the Bug fighter I’d brought.  The Bug fighter that, though she didn’t know it, wasn’t going to be flying anywhere without a few hours’ worth of repairs to its engine.</p><p>Marco hadn’t started morphing yet.  Ax’s tail was still lowered.  That had to be a good sign, right?  Like maybe they really didn’t want to get shot?</p><p>“Eva,” I said more loudly.  “There’s no need for any of this.”  I looked at Ax and Marco.  “I’ll just, just go with you.  And then no one has to get hurt, and you can let Eva go.”</p><p>“Yeah, see, that was our first clue.”  Cassie.  Stepping into view to our left.  Still shaking off the last of some morph.</p><p>Eva whipped the end of the dracon beam toward the new threat, then swung it back around.  We were surrounded on three sides, backs to a wall.  And she could shoot all she wanted, but we were beat.  Had been beat from the moment we’d been cornered by even one Animorph, much less three.</p><p>“You two keep trying to protect each other,” Cassie said, “in a way that seems pretty unlike most yeerks we’ve known.”  She held up both hands, as if that was enough to convey <em> I’m unarmed </em>from one morpher to another.</p><p>“Second clue was the morphing,” Marco said.  He raised his eyebrows at me.  “You said it, man.  If controllers could morph, we’d know already.  Mainly in the form of being completely and totally fucked.”</p><p>&lt;And then there was the phone call from Prince Jake.&gt;  Ax made a gesture toward the door, presumably indicating the pay phone on the street outside.</p><p>"He's at home right now," Marco said.  "At home, babysitting someone who looks a hell of a lot like Tom."  He gave me a long once-over.  "And if you do have identical twin, then by all indication he has no idea about our boy being an Animorph."</p><p>I did my best to return his gaze.  Trying to look innocent, and sincere, and human.  I wanted to glance over at Eva to see if the same slim hope was dawning on her, but didn't dare look away from the threat.</p><p>“How did you find us?” I asked, voice small.</p><p>There was a <em> click </em> from overhead, talons against metal.  A raptor landing on the Bug fighter at our backs.  Closing the loop.</p><p>I flinched.</p><p>&lt;What makes you think we ever lost you?&gt; Tobias said.</p><p>“You’ve been following us since Monday?”  Eva was still darting glances from one of them to the other, but she’d lowered the dracon beam slightly.  Her finger was well away from the trigger guard now.</p><p>“Give or take,” Marco said.  “The whole time you’ve known who were are, where we live, that we can morph.  And yet here we are, breathing and un-controller-ified.”</p><p>“Yep.”  That was Rachel, stepping out of the door of the Bug fighter I’d just vacated.  She raised her eyebrows.  “And you know what you guys <em> haven’t </em> done at any point in the last three days?”</p><p>Eva and I glanced at each other.</p><p>The bubble of hope in my chest expanded, strengthening a little more.</p><p>“Oh,” I whispered.</p><p>Rachel crossed her arms, leaning against the open door of the Bug fighter.  “So.  You feel like explaining yourselves?”</p><p>Slowly, Eva lowered the dracon beam the rest of the way.  Tucking it back into her pocket.  “I hadn’t considered this possibility,” she said to me.</p><p>I shrugged.  “They are smarter than us.  And more experienced.”</p><p>She laughed, a little breathless.</p><p>“Yeah, that’s another thing.”  Marco started to step forward, stopping when Eva tensed.  “Tom.  You knew our playbook.  What morphs we’d use, how we’d come after you…”  He glanced at Eva again, but then focused on me.  “That line about time travel.  It wasn’t total bullshit, was it?”</p><p>“Like I said,” I stage-whispered to Eva.  “Smarter than us.”</p><p>And now that I thought about it, landing two feet away from us while in gull morph just to see what we'd do was <em>exactly </em>Marco's brand of brilliant stupidity.  Guess we'd passed that test.</p><p>“That’s why we came here.”  Eva stepped forward, addressing the entire group.  “We’re trying to collapse the sario rip and get back to our own time.  In theory…”  She drew a line in the air from one Bug fighter’s main dracon beam to the other.  “…that should do the trick.”</p><p>&lt;Yes,&gt; Ax said slowly.  &lt;The theory is sound.  Untested, but sound.&gt;</p><p>“Um, yeah, that’s about where we were at,” I said.  “Unless you know something we don’t."</p><p>“So you’re real.”  Marco was staring at Eva as if through a microscope.  “You’re really real.  You’re not…”  He swallowed, drawing himself up.  “You’re you.”</p><p>Eva took another step forward.  Posture carefully neutral, so as not to startle anyone.  “I am.”</p><p>Marco collided with her, almost knocking her over but for the arms he had wrapped around her middle.  Eva brought cautious hands up, squeezing him close even as he curled forward to press his head into her shoulder.</p><p>“You’re from the future,” Rachel said to me, turning away.  Visibly uncomfortable with this much emotion.</p><p>“Uh, yeah.”  I focused on her as well.</p><p>“So?” she demanded.</p><p>“So…?”</p><p>“Do we win?”  The toughened edge of her voice couldn’t hide her desperation.  “Do we matter, in the end?”</p><p>I stared up at her, alive and breathing and real.  And then I dropped my gaze.</p><p>&lt;He doesn’t know that.&gt;  Ax spoke almost gently.</p><p> “What do you mean?  The war’s over, when I’m from, and—”  I found I still couldn’t look at Rachel.  “Yeah, you guys won it.”</p><p>&lt;In your own timeline,&gt; Ax said, &lt;are any of us still alive?&gt;</p><p>“What?”  My voice came out weird and flat.  I focused on looking only at him.  “Yeah.  Yeah.”</p><p>&lt;And have the versions of us you know ever spoken of these events to you?&gt;</p><p>I could see where he was going with this.  “Uh, no.”</p><p>&lt;And yet there is no reason I imagine that you would swear us to secrecy.&gt;</p><p>“Uh, no,” I said again.  “Unless you think it might, uh, mess up the timeline if we knew?”</p><p>&lt;Unlikely.&gt;</p><p>“Guess not, then.”</p><p>&lt;Then it is as I suspected.&gt;  He turned both stalk eyes toward Rachel, main eyes still focused on me.  &lt;This is an intersection of two slightly different versions of the same reality.  It’s possible in theory.&gt;</p><p>&lt;Wait, what?&gt;  Tobias fluttered down to land next to Rachel.  &lt;Alternate… realities?&gt;</p><p>“We dimension-hopped?” I asked.</p><p>Ax shifted in place, scuffing a hoof on the floor.  &lt;It may instead be that the versions of you which experienced time continuously until the sario rip were simply annihilated in the event that created the rip.&gt;</p><p>“And, what, this is all some kind of <em> Sixth Sense </em> thing?” I said, taking an involuntary step back until I impacted the side of the Bug fighter.</p><p>&lt;No, if <em> you’re </em> dead and <em> we’re </em> the hallucinations, it’d be some kind of <em> Jacob’s Ladder </em> thing,&gt; Tobias said.  &lt;In theory, anyway.&gt;</p><p>Rachel rolled her eyes.  “I don’t feel like a hallucination.”</p><p>&lt;That’s just what a hallucination would say,&gt; Tobias said darkly.</p><p>“Well, I don’t feel dead either.  Tom, do you feel dead?”</p><p>“Ugh, no, new topic.”  I squeezed my eyes shut like I was trying to press the thoughts out of my brain.  “Any new topic.”</p><p>“Okay, back up.”  Cassie looked up at me, and then over to Ax.  “Bug fighters can time travel?”</p><p>&lt;No,&gt; Ax said, at the same time I said, “Not on purpose.”</p><p>Ax made a small, polite gesture for me to continue.</p><p>“Nuh-uh, you’re going to have to take this one,” I said.  “All I’ve got are secondhand Yeerk Empire rumors about training accidents that sound like some kind of Philadelphia Experiment bullshit.”</p><p>&lt;An explosion of sufficient magnitude, under the correct circumstances, can create a hole in the space-time fabric.&gt;  Ax tilted both stalk eyes in a gesture of uncertainty.  &lt;I believe.  If you are indeed… displaced, at this time, then it is possible that a second explosion of sufficient magnitude would cause the rip to collapse and your timeline to… reset, I suppose, from the continuity of your consciousness.  If I remember that textbook chapter correctly.  Which I may not.&gt;</p><p>“Cool,” I muttered.  “That’s reassuring.”</p><p>Eva had stepped back from Marco, although he was still clinging to her arm.  “Don’t suppose we could do a search of internal andalite files?” she asked.</p><p>&lt;From a human computer?&gt;  Tobias laughed.  &lt;Uh, no.&gt;</p><p>“Guess that’s still in the future, then.”  She glanced around.  “Or, rather, the future of this present, if your universe parallels ours.”</p><p>“Time travel makes my brain hurt,” Marco complained.</p><p>Eva smiled faintly.  “At least you’re not dead like Tom and I might be.”</p><p>Marco pressed his lips together, clearly not amused.</p><p>“So.”  I held both hands open to Ax.  “Our idea isn’t completely nuts, right?”</p><p>&lt;Not completely…&gt;</p><p>Which was <em> also </em> not the most reassuring thing he’d ever said.</p><p>“Okay, um.”  I chewed my lip, trying to think it through.  “What’s the over-under on us dying horribly, you think?”</p><p>&lt;There might be evidence left behind in your own timeline if indeed you did die here.&gt;  He squinted at us both.  &lt;Do you have any sort of experience of the alternate versions of yourself that currently exist?  Have you found yourself acting within one timeline, only to discover you are suddenly in another?  It would be as a hallucination, I suppose, for a human mind.&gt;</p><p>This time Eva and I both burst out laughing.</p><p>“No,” I said, after a second, realizing they were all staring at us.  “Nope, definitely not.”</p><p>“A human-controller does not <em> perform actions</em>,” Eva explained.  “And if either of us has memory of having experienced some glimpses of these events, back in our first experience of 1999…”</p><p>“How’d it be different from any of the other hallucinations?” I finished.</p><p>“Exactly,” Eva said.</p><p>There was a long silence.  I think we’d discomfited the Animorphs, who were all looking nervously at each other.</p><p>&lt;That is unilluminating, then,&gt; Ax said at last.</p><p>I shrugged.  “Assuming we’re both completely batshit anyway, is there any <em> other </em>way to tell if we’re about to blow ourselves up?”</p><p>“Your worldview is completely whacked,” Marco said.  “Has anyone ever told you that?”</p><p>“You have,” I pointed out, “loads of times.”</p><p>Clearly lost on what to make of that, he lapsed into silence.</p><p>“We are on a tight timeline here,” Eva said.  “The inspection crew is no doubt already in the process of discovering that we faked that alarm.”  She looked at Ax.  “We’re going ahead with this plan, if you have no further objections.  Is there anything to increase our odds of success?”</p><p>&lt;You plan to overload the engines of one Bug fighter through deliberately maximizing the power of the main dracon beam, while simultaneously firing the other?&gt; he asked.  &lt;And you’ll be setting a delay protocol in place in order to give you time to sync the targeting systems?&gt;</p><p>While he and Eva descended into technobabble, I turned away and looked back up at Rachel.</p><p>“Either spit it out or don’t,” she told me.  “Or if it’s for Jake, write it down.”</p><p>I laughed.  There was a reason she was my favorite cousin.  Apologies to all other affected parties.</p><p>“I...”  I took a breath.  “I don’t even know where to start to...”</p><p>“You’re from the future.”  Rachel crossed her arms.  “So give us the skinny on what the yeerks are up to.”</p><p>I took the out she offered, whether or not she’d offered it knowingly.  “Our intel might be no good,” I warned.  “But at the very least I can give you a list of things to look into.”</p><p>Rachel glanced over at Tobias, beckoning.  He flared, dropping down to land lightly on her shoulder.</p><p>&lt;Yeerk pool entrances?&gt; he asked.</p><p>“Maybe.”  I made a loose, uncertain gesture.  “In my version of 1999, anyway.”</p><p>&lt;Fire away.&gt;</p><p>“Car wash across the road from the elementary school,” I said.  “Pur’n’Kleen, I think it’s called.”</p><p>&lt;Huh.&gt;  Tobias tilted his head in consideration.</p><p>“McDonald’s, the one on the corner of State and Anapamu.  Password’s —”</p><p>“’Extra happy.’”  Rachel nodded.  “We got that one.”</p><p>“The antique store on that little strip outside of Alameda Park.”  I ticked them off on my fingers, remembering.  “Three in the mall — one in the Gap dressing room, one in the Border’s, and one in the back room of Sharper Image.  Uh, the Filene’s Basement downtown, and the Blockbuster across the street from there.”</p><p>&lt;Huh.&gt;  Tobias glanced at Rachel.  &lt;Yeah, I can picture the layout, now that you’re saying it.  It’s, what, three square miles?  Roughly circular?&gt;</p><p>I thought it over, trying to make a mental map of the whole thing.  Cartography was definitely not my strong suit, and it wasn’t like I’d ever walked the place from one end to the other.  Heck, <em> I </em> hadn’t walked most of it ever, and I hadn’t exactly been paying close attention a lot of the times my body was down there.</p><p>“Uh.  Kinda egg-shaped?”  I sketched an approximate shape in the air with one hand.  “Oblong?  Like, it’s got some areas that stick out northwest-southeast more, and it’s more, uh, smushed along the other two directions.”</p><p>Luckily for me, Tobias and Rachel were both nodding.</p><p>&lt;Some of the access tunnels must be really long, then,&gt; he said.  &lt;The actual pool itself…&gt;</p><p>“Under the empty lot just north of the mall,” I said.  “You know, the one that’s been under construction since forever?  It’s got that chain-link fence and that abandoned crane —”</p><p>“Yeah,” Rachel said sharply, “we know where that is.”</p><p>It took me a second to place her impatience.  They’d met Elfangor there.  Of course.  Watched Elfangor die there.  Become Animorphs there.</p><p>Yeah, they knew what empty lot I was talking about.</p><p>“Um.  Anyway.”  I ran a hand over my hair, at a loss for how else to compact years’ worth of military intelligence into a few quick sound bites.  “You know why this room’s full of oatmeal?”</p><p>“Got it.”</p><p>“Yeerk Peace Movement?”</p><p>“Cassie thinks that’s a thing.  That’s a thing?”</p><p>“That’s a thing.  You know Mr. Tidwell who teaches tenth-grade science?”</p><p>“Sure.  You mean…?”</p><p>“Yeah, ask him for a way to talk to the rest of them.”</p><p>“Huh."</p><p>"Taxxons aren't too happy with the Empire either," I said.  "Or a pretty big subset of them aren't."</p><p>"Taxxons.  You want us to team up with taxxons."</p><p>"Find a guy called Arbron, he'll be your in."</p><p>"Or he'll just eat us."</p><p>"Or he'll just eat you."</p><p>"Cool."  Rachel rolled her eyes.  "What else?”</p><p>“Okay, Jake’s going to have to help with this, but on our home computer, there’s a file labeled ‘English homework’, in a folder that’s just called ‘Assignments.’  Temrash 114 put it there.”</p><p>“What is it, a virus?”</p><p>I shook my head.  “A roster of Sharing members.”</p><p>“Well, shit.”  Rachel was grinning.</p><p>I knew how time travel worked.  Well, no.  No I didn’t.  But I knew enough to know that if Eva and I had gotten here by a sario rip, then a second explosion was only going to be enough to get the two of us home.  The two of us, and no passengers.</p><p>There would be no taking anyone else with us.</p><p>“Ground-based kandrona,” I said quickly.</p><p>“EGS tower, right?”  Rachel gave a small bow.  “We trashed it.”</p><p>“Then its replacement is in the shipping warehouse one block north of the fishing pier.”</p><p>“The one with the green roof?”</p><p>“Um.”  I searched my memory.  “Yeah.  Yeah.”</p><p>“Tom,” Eva said.  “I think we’ve got it.”</p><p>It was time.</p><p>There wasn’t time for anything else.  Too much to say, even if I had a year in which to say it.  Even if I had all the time in the world.</p><p>I was forgetting a million things.  I knew I was.  There were a million others I was leaving out, no way to compress them into a single piece of intel, no way to know what kind of impact they'd make.  Would telling them how I became a morpher make everything better or worse?  If the name James Connerton meant nothing to them, would giving it out early only serve to fuck everything up?</p><p>“Look out for yourselves, okay?” I said at last.</p><p>"Always do," Rachel said.</p><p>I looked at her, my strong, fearless cousin.  My cousin who’d died saving my life.  I glanced over to Tobias.  “And look out for each other.”</p><p>&lt;Sure thing,&gt; Tobias said.</p><p>I think maybe he realized what I was trying to say.  What I wasn’t saying, and what it might mean if I wasn’t saying it.</p><p>“What, you think I need a boy to protect me?” Rachel demanded.</p><p>“Wouldn’t dream of implying it.”  I smiled at her.  “But you can still be careful, okay?”</p><p>Maybe their future would be different.  It <em> would </em> be different, if only just because Eva and I had been here.  But would it be enough?</p><p>&lt;We can,&gt; Tobias promised.  &lt;We will.&gt;</p><p>And what if what I’d just not-told him changed something?  What if they were more cautious as a result, and what if they lost the war because of that fear of risk?  What then?</p><p>“Yeah,” I said.  “Yeah.”</p><p>Eva started to turn toward her own Bug fighter, but swung back around.  She caught Marco in another fierce hug, holding him tight for several seconds.  Leaning up, she whispered something in his ear.</p><p>“Yeah, I know,” he said, but he was smiling.</p><p>Eva looked across at me.</p><p>I nodded.</p><p>I turned to Rachel again, unable to help it.  “Look out for Jake for me?” I said, rather than any of the things I wanted to say.</p><p>Rachel snapped off a salute, smiling at me.  She jumped down from the Bug fighter ramp, giving my shoulder a friendly shove as she went by.</p><p>Heading back into the Bug fighter, I leaned against the computer console for few seconds.  It was too big, to know if I’d made the right decision.  I didn’t even know if there was any other choice to be made.</p><p>“You there?”  Eva’s voice through the comm speakers made me jump.</p><p>I fumbled to press a hand on the computer and switch on my own comms.  “I’m here.”</p><p>“Sending the target lock through now.”</p><p>“Thanks.”</p><p>The screen beeped less than a second later — yeerk computers have processing power to put human technology to shame — and I aligned the targeting system to the coordinates Eva sent.  Then I switched the front hull to transparent again and crouched to look directly over the barrel of the main dracon beam, making sure it was aligned to hers the old-fashioned way.</p><p>None of the Animorphs were visible out there.  Presumably Ax had had the good sense to get them well out of the way.  If all went well, the explosion might annihilate the entire room.  If it went badly, we could end up taking out the half the yeerk pool cavern.</p><p>Looking directly down the barrel of the dracon beam, I could see an unbroken line across both Bug fighters’ weapons.</p><p>“We’re aligned,” I told Eva over comms.</p><p>"Confirming."</p><p>She typed away for several more seconds that seemed to go on forever.  There wasn't a ton of room for error here, so I got why she was doing redundant checks.</p><p>I just felt about ready to peel out of my own skin with nerves, and dearly wanted her to hurry it up.</p><p>“Set the beam to fire automatically at eighteen-forty-one and thirty seconds, local time,” she said.  “I’ll do the same on this end.”</p><p>Finally.</p><p>I glanced at the computer’s clock.  That was about two and a half minutes into the future.  It took only seconds to type in the correct commands.</p><p>“Eighteen-forty-one-thirty, confirmed,” I said, when it was done.</p><p>“All right, then.”</p><p>“Hey, Eva?”</p><p>“Yes?”</p><p>“This is gonna work, right?”</p><p>“Yes.  I have the utmost confidence.”</p><p>“Oh, yeah.  Me too.  Now that you mention it.”</p><p>“Excellent.”</p><p>“Hey Eva?”</p><p>“Yes?”</p><p>“You bullshitting me about that ‘utmost confidence’ thing, or does it just sound like it?”</p><p>“Tom.  Darling.  Are you only saying this because I’m about to fire a giant dracon beam at you?”</p><p>“Maybe.  So…”</p><p>“I’ll tell you once we’re done.  Impudent brat.”</p><p>“Love you too, Visser Mom.”</p><p>“That’s—”</p><p>
  <em> ZZAAAAAAAWWW-WHOMP </em>
</p><p>The flash of light was so bright it was physically painful.  My vision whited out entirely.  And then the impact.</p><p>The concussion threw me backwards, slamming me against the back wall of the fighter.  Lucky the space was so small, because if it’d been any bigger than the impacts against the wall, against the floor, against the window, might’ve been enough to kill me.  Inertia tossed me around in the space like a sock in a clothes dryer.</p><p>And then I fell, and kept falling.  For a long, long time I plummeted downward.  For so long that all light and all sound faded out, and then I faded away.</p><p>***************</p><p>The first thing I registered on opening my eyes was a wall of green-tan metal.  The filing cabinet.  <em> Our </em>filing cabinet.</p><p>I sat up slowly, almost tipping over to the far side when I overbalanced.</p><p>“You okay?” I said.</p><p>“Mmm?”  Eva was slowly rolling over as well.</p><p>I looked around at the familiar Matter Over Mind office, with our mismatched green and orange furniture, our fuzzy but very human computer monitor.  At the window, back to being transparent.</p><p>At the stack of prototype posters Bonnie’d spent an entire afternoon printing, only to have Eva reject the design — something about the fact that they featured a human foot in platform heels smashing down on a yeerk and the slogan “humanity, fuck yeah!” had led Eva to make ridiculous accusations about them being <em>unprofessional.</em></p><p>At the motivational poster we <em> had </em>been allowed to hang on the wall, which featured the words “self control,” and had been trimmed with scissors to get rid of the quote about willpower that originally appeared underneath.</p><p>At Eva, smoothing a hand over her hair and looking astonished.</p><p>The billboard across the street was advertising hork-bajir-led tours of Yellowstone, silhouetted by the late afternoon sun.</p><p>It was 2001.  Again.</p><p>“Hey Aunty Em,” I breathed, “I think we’re home.”</p><p>“Well.”  Eva was also looking around at our surprisingly undamaged office.  “I suppose our Symbiote neither succeeded in stopping the protest nor in killing us.”</p><p>“Go team,” I said.</p><p>Rachel’d been alive, in that version of 1999.  Was maybe even still alive in that universe’s version of 2001.  If I’d brought her into that Bug fighter… Hell, if I’d brought <em> all </em>of them in, saved them from their bullshit mid-war lives and brought them here…</p><p>If it even would have worked at all.  And not just annihilated them all in the blast.</p><p>Would they have taken that risk, if I’d offered?  Was there a universe out there where I <em> had </em> offered, had really sat down and explained it to them and convinced them to try?</p><p>It didn’t bear thinking about.  I pushed to my feet.  “Eva…”</p><p>“I’ll be calling Peter, I suppose.”  She crossed her arms, walking over to survey the innocent-looking remains of our package.  “He’ll at least have some idea about what caused it to do all that.”</p><p>“Probably the same thing it’s been in all those cases Jake’s ducklings handle,” I suggested.  “Some stupid yahoo tried to hybridize yeerk and human tech, and it went wrong for everyone.”</p><p>Jake’s <em> ducklings </em> were an elite counter-terrorism unit who didn’t know I called them that.  So it might’ve been worth giving them a call as well.</p><p>Eva hmmed agreement.  “Tomorrow’s problem.  <em> Tomorrow</em>, as in the day it was supposed to become before this day started.”</p><p>I didn’t even try to figure out if that sentence made sense or not.  “You need me here?” I asked.</p><p>Again she grabbed my arm, far too gently to risk even twitching my wrist.  “Yes,” she said, “but head home anyway, won’t you?  And Tom...”  She smiled.  “Perhaps hold off on opening any more mail for now.”</p>
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